So your dog has great recall…inside your house. How about outside? When another dog is around? When they're sniffing a stain on the ground? Let alone when a demonic squirrel comes running by!
Recall is possibly the most important skill for your dog to learn, and it’s usefulness ranges from being able to respect other dogs’ and people’s boundaries, to saving you time, energy, and stress, to saving your dog’s life from something they don’t know is dangerous.
First, what is recall?
I would define it as your dog coming to you when you tell it to come. I would also add that a side of effect of good recall is that your dog just comes to you frequently to check-in, unprompted.
Most dogs have decent recall inside the house, because usually it means food or pets and scratches incoming from their human. They might think "I've been lounging all day in the house, so why not go to the human that just called me." Competition for recall is also low inside the house.
But as soon as you get into stimulating, fun, and/or new environments, most dogs forget about their human and whatever words are coming out of their mouth. This isn't intentional disobedience on their part. You just haven't trained their recall enough in these types of environments or situations.
I'm not a professional dog trainer. I'm a relatively "normal" person, probably like you. Yet my dog, Lupin, a Hungarian Vizsla (Pointer), has great recall, even in the face of tremendous distractions. Vizslas are bred to lock onto birds and run. They're known for being spastic, easily distracted, and having a high prey drive.
He’s 2 ½ years old, and a few months ago we both saw a bunny in the neighborhood, about 50 ft away from us. I sometimes let him chase wild bunnies because they always scamper away quickly, but he has to wait for me to approve. So he locks onto it, and I tell him he can “get it”, and he explodes into a sprint. I’m watching and the bunny isn’t moving as Lupin is closing in. I realize this is not a wild bunny, and, with Lupin just a few feet away, bunny still in the same place, I yell “LUPIN COME!” He skids to a stop and turns right back around to come back to me.
Even I was surprised by how responsive he was: completely locked on, victory right under his nose, and he was still able to immediately snap back to me.
If I can build a bombproof recall on him, you can build one on yours. The thing most trainer videos skip past quickly: recall is a numbers game. The more your dog comes when called, the more it becomes part of its muscle memory to come when called.
What "Bombproof" Actually Means
A bombproof dog recall isn't a recall that works just in your kitchen. It's a recall that works everywhere and always:
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Another dog is 30 feet away and running
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They’re already playing with another dog
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A jogger just turned the corner
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A squirrel just darted up a tree
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It’s time to leave the park
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Someone appears who is scared of dogs
Define your bar. Mine is: 9 out of 10 times in real-world distractions, off-leash, on the first cue. 10 out of 10 on the second cue. That's the standard. Anything less and recall becomes more of a suggestion.
Why Most Recalls Fail: Inconsistency and Rep Starvation
The number one reason owners don’t have good recall with their dog is inconsistent implementation. Owners will call their dog, but do nothing if it doesn’t come. Every time this happens, the owner is teaching their dog that it gets to choose when it comes.
The second reason is rep starvation. Owners just don’t practice it. I have no idea how many recall reps most dogs get each week. Probably somewhere between zero and 10. Imagine you wanted to get better at basketball and you shot 5 to 10 baskets per week.
Volume and consistency are key.
Build Reward First, Then Add the Cue
Training works better when you build the reward value first, before you're asking the dog to perform under any pressure. This means practicing what coming to you feels like to the dog before the cue is attached. Crouch down, run the other direction, make yourself the most interesting thing in the room. Let the dog chase you and take food from your hands while you're moving together. Give it some love scratches.
When your dog is reliably doing this, then add the recall cue word (e.g. come) first, and then do whatever you were doing to get your dog to come to you, and keep rewarding.
What's happening to your dog here:
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Learning the action
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Loving the action
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Associating the cue word with the action that it loves
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Making the action part of its muscle memory
And at some point it becomes second nature.
The Spontaneous Reps Framework
When you're starting out, you can't practice recall too much. The best way to start is to just do it whenever you think of it. Even if you don't have treats on you in the moment, entice your dog to come to you as often as possible, and give it love — rubs and scratches. Using treats will make it stronger and happen faster.
If you're a goal type person, set a number for each day. I think 10 is a minimum, but aim for 20+. Make tally marks for each day on a piece of paper if it helps. These reps take 10 seconds max each time.
TIP: If you're having trouble getting your dog to come to you in the first place, put a long leash on them and reel them in whenever you give your cue. Then give the amazing rewards when they get to you. What you want to minimize giving your cue and them ignoring it. Because that's training too, just the exact opposite of what you want.
When I started training Lupin, I was constantly getting Lupin to come to me and giving him rewards. It was definitely something I had to remember to do at first, but pretty quickly it became muscle memory for me to ask him to come. It really helped to have treats on me, because it served as a reminder for me and it gave me the confidence that I could give Lupin a good reward.
The best way to do high-frequency reps is having treats on you always.
This is the actual blocker. Reps live and die on whether the reward is delivered in time. If you have to walk back to a cupboard, find a treat pouch, or peel apart a piece of jerky, the rep is dead.
That's why I made Doggo Discs and carry them everywhere. They're freeze-dried single-ingredient training treats — less than 1 calorie per disc — sized so you can run 50 reps without worrying about overfeeding. And they’re stacked in a portable tube that’s easy to stash around and carry with you.
You don't need our treats. But you need some treat or reward that lives on your body, all day, every day. Ours just remove a lot of the friction.
That's the whole system in miniature. The mechanics — four stages, distraction proofing, generalization — are in Part 2.