[sharkboh]

Hi All,

Just joined up so this is my first post, hope you can help us.

I have a male 6 year old staffy and a 18 month old female staffy x springer spaniel (a spaffy .

My little girl is adorable but, she will not recall when she see's a deer, cat, dog, rabbit, person, bird, horse or anything that breathes.

We have trained her to recall with a dog whistle and treats and when she isn't distracted she comes back every time.

She has bundles of energy and we walk her for 90 mins average per day in the fields around our village.

On the walks she is on hyper alert all of the time, looking for anything to move to chase...when she see's another animal

she goes right after it and totally ignores the whistle, she is a proper little hunter....

The other day she startled a deer and went off after it, she ran through a hedge and was gone out of sight for at least 5 minutes.

I walked around blowing the whistle and calling for ages, I thought I had lost her and was very worried. Finally she came bolling back, big panting grin

on her chops as if to say didn't I do well...

I am getting worried she is going to get lost one of these times and really need some good advise... I cant really keep her on the lead

as she needs to drain her energy, even after an hours jog she is still full of beans...

Any ideas????


Look forward to hearing from you,

Thanks

Steve

 

[AussieOwner]

I'm working with my mini shephards on this right now also. Going with the advice from the trainers from their obedience class I am excercising them in a local field with a long lead, letting them get quite a bit out and practicing their recall. Drop leash training has helped a little bit (letting them drag the leash on the ground and steppingn on it BEFORE they get a chance to bolt or get too far ahead. Supposed to teach them their acceptable "wander distance") Sometimes using a command they are really good at will stop them cold... if they get too worked up over something, a good stern "SIT" will really focus them *sometimes*

Good luck!

 

[Shell]

Put her on a long lead, reinforce the training among the distractions. By blowing the whistle and calling for her when she can CHOOSE not to come back, all you are doing is make the command have no meaning. there is no "strength" behind your whistle because she knows that coming back is optional, like "ha ha, you can't make me!"

So get a ~25 foot line (try a horse lunge line for a cheaper long lead) and when she takes off towards a distraction, call her and if she obeys,give her a really really good treat. If she doesn't obey, reel her back in on the line and keep walking. Give her slack in the line, let her get distracted again and call her again. Repeat.

Don't even think of letting her off leash until she is returning (with distractions while on a long lead) 100% of the time.

For burning energy- look into other ways to burn energy than just walking (which a healthy young dog like that can do for hours and hours). Weight pull, agility, rally, frisbee (disc dogs), swimming etc. And of course, mental work by obedience training etc helps tire a dog out. Thinking is hard after all