[DesmondsDad]

Hi,

Our 9-month-old cockapoo Desmond is going through what I believe to be the 'terrible teens', where a lot of the training we have done with him seems to have gone out of the window.

His recall in particular is bad when we're out on a walk and he's off lead - his nose is constantly to the ground and he goes off wandering far out into bushes with complete disregard to our calls.

He's been back on the training lead today whilst we get the recall back up. I just wondered whether anyone had any similar experience of this happening at this age, and if anybody could offer any reassurance that it'll get better if we stick with it?

Finally, ever since he's been a pup he's always had an urge to just run over to any dog and want to play. There is no aggression at all, but he obviously gets out of control and could one day run up the wrong dog and suffer the consequences. On his training lead today he saw a dog in the distance and just kept pulling and pulling and whining.

I just wondered what peoples tip/actions/commands were for trying to train this out of him? Eg, in that situation what would you do?

Many thanks!

 

[2ndhandgal]

Perfectly normal for his age and keeping him on the training line until his recall is sorted and he no longer runs up to other dogs without permission is the way to go.

You need to take tons of things which are the best ever for rewarding his recall so top class food rewards and really good tuggy toys and reward all recalls. When he sees something like the other dog on his training line and is pulling to get to them just ignore him until he stops pulling and looks around for something else to focus on - at this point put everything you can into recall and if he does recall have a real party with rewards so he is in doubt he made an excellent choice. If he ignores you, walk up the training line to halve the distance between you and wait for the next opportunity to call him

 

[DesmondsDad]

Perfectly normal for his age and keeping him on the training line until his recall is sorted and he no longer runs up to other dogs without permission is the way to go.

You need to take tons of things which are the best ever for rewarding his recall so top class food rewards and really good tuggy toys and reward all recalls. When he sees something like the other dog on his training line and is pulling to get to them just ignore him until he stops pulling and looks around for something else to focus on - at this point put everything you can into recall and if he does recall have a real party with rewards so he is in doubt he made an excellent choice. If he ignores you, walk up the training line to halve the distance between you and wait for the next opportunity to call him

Thank you - this is great advice, specifically for the attraction to other dogs.

I'm assuming the ultimate goal of this training is that when he's off the lead, he will see another dog in the distance but stay close and attentive to you because that is the bigger reward?

Also, our dog is a big fan of tugging games (he doesn't do fetch, which is quite annoying!). I've never considered using this on training walks as we tend to stick to cooked chicken, so this could help massively!

 

[2ndhandgal]

Yes I make the choice about who my dog says hello to. If it is a friendly dog I know mine will play with and who will be happy to see them I will recall them first, reward them heavily for c9ming back to me and then tell them they can go and play, so they are not missing out but they are under your control and other dog owners will be very grateful.

If you have used chicken for rewards up to now consider switching up to something higher value - liver cake or sardines cake tend to be super high value Liver cake recipe. A dog treat they will love

Also consider a special tuggy toy you only use for walks