Q&A: Obedience trainers: tips for an emergency recall?
Question by ceejay24: Obedience trainers: tips for an emergency recall?
I asked this question a few days ago and only got a few responses, most of which were rude.
I own a Shiba Inu mix, the breed is not reliable off leash and I do not allow my Shiba off leash in areas that are close to roads or anything else he could get hurt by, but we do have areas in my town that dogs are allowed that are far enough away from roads and things that I let me dog off leash.
What I am wondering is if someone can help me through the steps to teaching him an emergency recall. If you are not familiar with the emergency recall, please don’t answer, I don’t need more answers like the last time I asked telling me there is no such thing as an emergency recall, my dog just isn’t trained, blah blah. These people have obviously never owned a Shiba.
So if you have any tips or if anyone else that has worked with the Shiba could give me some pointers on making him more willing to come when called.
Again, do not tell me my dog is not trained, he is, and has been through obedience training, the Shiba breed is KNOWN for not being good at recall, so don’t blow up on me about it. Thanks.
Please star if you have contacts that are into obedience training, I’m really hoping for a helpful answer this time around from someone who knows what they are talking about 
Do I need to repeat that I never allow my dog off leash in areas that are even in close proximity to anything dangerous?
My dog is trained pretty reliably to come when called, however, I do not feel this is my only option and that I should be armed (and the dog should be trained) to respond to a different recall command, one that is not used on a daily basis, in the chance that he should ever be in a dangerous situation.
Collars slip, kids leave doors open, these are all things I would like to be prepared for if for whatever reason ‘come’ is not enough.
Lioness: I don’t consider understanding my breed’s strengths and weaknesses an excuse.
I am extremely familiar with the Shiba Inu, have owned one and worked with Shiba rescue for about five years. My dog is well trained, he has been through obedience classes and is trained on a daily basis in all sorts of situations, please spare me with telling me all I am spewing is excuses. I specifically stated in the original question that I was not looking for a scolding, I was looking for tips from other people who knew what I was talking about, and since you have never heard of an emergency recall, obviously, you are not familiar with it.
Thank you memphis belle for actually understanding how difficult it can be to train a high prey drive dog to recall each and every time.
I have never considered an e-collar for my dog but I think in this situation it may work but only if I can find a trainer I trust to teach me how to use it properly.
Best answer:
Answer by Horse Lover
Try http://www.aboutdogobedience.com/emergency-recall-command.php
It may help.
What do you think? Answer below!
JVZoo Product Feed
The emergency recall is used for a life or death situation only, not when your dog just runs off. So work extremely hard to get a normal recall as well, because even if you’re far off from a road, your Shiba can easily get there!! (Or never let your dog off leash or only in enclosed areas.)
Anyways, the emergency recall is very simple to teach. First, find your dog’s favorite food. I use hotdogs for this. Get a bunch. Like TONS. Keep a bag with you full of sliced pieces. Have someone else hold your dog while you go stand off maybe 20-30 feet. Call your Shiba, be exciteable, run around, wave you arms, just get your Shiba to come to you. When he comes, have already a large handful of hot dog waiting for him. As soon as he gets to you, without hesitation, basically stuff his mouth full of hot dogs. Praise him immensly!
Get the other person to retrieve him and you move off again, adding more distance by 15 feet or so each time. Continue with the praise and stuffing him full of treats. That’s his motivation to come to you! After a few times you can actually hide in easy places, and have your dog come. You need to do this because your dog needs to respond mostly to your voice and find you, because often times in an emergency recall your dog can’t see you.
Tips:
-Use a short, quick word that’s different than your call word for emergency recall. We use “now”. Say your dog’s name and this word continuously in a higher voice with enthusiasm, this will make your dog respond better.
-Don’t practice the emergency recall daily, maybe twice a week at first, then once a week, and once your dog knows it well, practice every other week. Why? Because this should be a game from your dog, and the less you do it, the more excited your dog will be to do it, so when they run off leash and you “play” this game they’re more likely to come.
-Make it a game!! This should be fun, exciting, rewarding for your dog. Not a chore. If your dog isn’t in to it, stop for the day. It should always be fun.
-If you ever need to use the emergency recall, you need to reward your dog. Even if you don’t have treats, immediately take your dog to a fast food place and buy them a burger, anything! If you don’t reward during the real thing, your dog will be extremely less motivated to come to you.
Good luck!
One word, e-collar. Have a trainer show you how to use one.
You’ll be darned lucky to get any sensible answers at all being uppity like that.
The worst dogs I’ve owned for recall were Borzois (probably way worse than your breed).
One on it’s own would come back to the noise of it’s favourite squeaker.
Both together would only come back to the squeaker if I turned around and quickly walked in the opposite direction.
Ideally you need to get your dog feeling that he needs to keep an eye on you all the time and have something really nice high value (only used as emergency recall) as a reward when it comes back.
You could use an electric collar for redirection, but the dog will still need to want to come back to you.
A number of breeds are just not 100% reliable off leash (huskies, shiba’s, terriers, etc.) so there is no guarantee than an emergency recall will ever work when you need it (such as the dog is running towards the road while chasing a squirrel). Realistically, it’s not possible to have ANY emergency recall work 100% of the time in any breed.
Your best bet is a long leash, that’s the only way you can be sure your dog is able to be under your control at all times.
In an emergency, if they LOOK at you you can try sitting or laying on the ground and calling them. The curiosity/play factor would be in your favor, but if the dog is in full flight after another creature or being chased by another dog, even that would not work.
You know your dog isn’t 100% with recall – why would you even chance it and let it roam free?
Please read this:
Trust…A Deadly Disease!
By: Sharon Mathers
There is a deadly disease stalking your dog, a hideous, stealthy thing just waiting its chance to steal your beloved friend. It is not a new disease, or one for which there are inoculations. The disease is called “Trust.”
You knew before you ever took your puppy home that it could not be trusted. The breeder who provided you with this precious animal warned you, drummed it into your head. Puppies steal off counters, destroy anything expensive, chase cats, take forever to house train, and must never be allowed off lead!!
When the big day finally arrived, heeding the sage advice of the breeder, you escorted your puppy to his new home, properly collared and tagged, the lead held tightly in your hand.
At home the house was “puppy-proofed.” Everything of value was stored in the spare bedroom, garbage stowed on top of the refrigerator, cats separated, and a gate placed across the living room to keep at least one part of the house puddle free. All windows and doors had been properly secured, and signs placed in all strategic points reminding all to “Close the door!”
Soon it becomes second nature to make sure the door closes nine-tenths of a second after it was opened and that it is really latched. “Don’t let the dog out” is your second most verbalized expression. (The first is “No!”)
You worry and fuss constantly, terrified that your darling will get out and disaster will surely follow. Your friends comment about whom you love most, your family or the dog. You know that to relax your vigil for a moment might lose him to you forever.
And so the weeks and months pass, with your puppy becoming more civilized every day, and the seeds of trust are planted. It seems that each new day brings less destruction, less breakage. Almost before you know it, your gangly, slurpy puppy has turned into an elegant, dignified friend.
Now that he is a more reliable, sedate companion, you take him more places. No longer does he chew the steering wheel when left in the car. And darned if that cake wasn’t still on the counter this morning. And, oh yes, wasn’t that the cat he was sleeping with so cozily on your pillow last night?
At this point you are beginning to become infected, the disease is spreading its roots deep into your mind.
And then one of your friends suggest obedience classes, and, after a time you even let him run loose from the car into the house when you get home. Why not, he always runs straight to the door, dancing a frenzy of joy and waits to be let in. And, remember he comes every time he is called. You know he is the exception that disproves the rule. (And sometimes late at night, you even let him slip out the front door to go potty and then right back in.)
Years pass – it is hard to remember why you ever worried so much when he was a puppy. He would never think of running out the door left open while you bring in the packages from the car. It would be beneath his dignity to jump out the window of the car while you run into the convenience store. And when you take him for those wonderful long walks at dawn, it only takes one whistle to send him racing back to you in a burst of speed when the walk comes too close to the highway. (He still gets in the garbage, but nobody is perfect!)
This is the time the disease has waited for so patiently. Sometimes it only has to wait a year or two, but often it takes much longer. He spies the neighbor dog across the street, and suddenly forgets everything he ever knew about not slipping out doors, jumping out windows or coming when called due to traffic. Perhaps it was only a paper fluttering in the breeze, or even just the sheer joy of running….
Stopped in an instant. Stilled forever – your heart is broken at the sight of his still beautiful body.
The disease is trust. The final outcome, hit by a car.
Every morning my dog bounced around off lead exploring. Every morning for seven years he came back when he was called. He was perfectly obedient, perfectly trustworthy. He died fourteen hours after being hit by a car.
Please do not risk your friend and your heart. Save the trust for things that do not matter.
Please read this every year on your puppy’s birthday, lest we forget.
I’ve been training for over 10 years and have never heard anybody refer to an ‘emergency recall’.
Treat every recall as an emergency, and you’ll have a solid recall. People who’s dogs have been conditioned and proofed in high distraction situations don’t need emergency recalls.
In my experience, the people who encounter emergencies are the people who spend most of their dog’s lives teaching them to ignore them by calling them incessantly when they are not able or even willing to enforce the command. (I see this every single day at the dog park)
I understand a Shiba is not going to be as easy as a Golden, but that’s a choice you made. I can call my dogs off a rabbit chase with my voice to the point one of my dogs nearly did a face plant on my parents front driveway in order to stop and come back when I saw him taking off after a squirrel across the street with a car coming.
Welcome to the wonderful world of e-collars, where dogs learn that just because they are not within your reach does not mean there are not consequences for disobedience.
That all said, I do recognize the need for knowing how to get a recall in an emergency (IMO, totally different than TEACHING an ‘emergency recall’). This may even include a dog you don’t know. In that case, the best chance you have is body language. Turn away, run away, become something incredibly interesting to chase (squealing, clapping hands, making an all out idiot of yourself), be extremely conscious of your body language – most people inadvertently get a dog to move away from them simply via their body language. Read Patricia McConnell’s books if you need more info on this.
Add: “he Shiba breed is KNOWN for not being good at recall, so don’t blow up on me about it”
Do you know what those words are? Excuses. Excuses spoken by an enabler. My Aunt and Uncle said the same thing about their Bedlington. They chose not to listen when I explained to them that if they didn’t condition their dog in off-leash situations with distraction and correction, their dog would be nearly incapable of being able to properly handle the situation when it came along. Their dog is dead. Hit by car. He didn’t come back when they called him.
I’m not scolding you, and I frankly don’t care what you do with your dog. I am telling you that I hear people say “my breed is known for this or that” all the time. It’s all excuses. Of course knowing your dog’s strengths and weaknesses is important. What I am saying is that you need to recognize the weaknesses and focus on the best solutions to them. In MY opinion, relying on an emergency recall is NOT the best solution for a dog who tends to be difficult with a recall. Constant work on that task with both reward and correction to the point your dog is reliable regardless of the situation IS a solution.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again – dogs with a solid recall don’t need an emergency recall. There should be no delineation between the two. By separating them, you are teaching your dog that some rules can be ignored. That’s not ok in my house. If I call my dogs, they better come. Period.
From what I can tell, the way people use an emergency recall is the way I treat any recall. If I’m not prepared to teat the recall as an emergency, I don’t call them. I don’t call my dog if I don’t think they will come, I don’t call them if I can’t do anything about it if they don’t, I don’t call them to do something I know they don’t want to do (like a bath, etc), and I don’t use their recall word more than once. So, I guess you could say my dogs recall IS an emergency recall. I don’t use it if I don’t have to.
Cookies, treats & praise work on the premise that nothing in the dog’s environment will ever be as rewarding to the dog as reward the handler is offering the dog.
Try calling a high prey drive dog & waggling a piece of nice juicy steak, when it has seen a nice live fluffy bunny & it’s natural instinct is to chase…..surprise, suprise when it ignores the recall in favor of chasing prey which is an extremely satisfying behavior.
Once a dog has been clearly taught a command, it needs to be proofed with compulsion training which is geared to suit the individual temperament of the dog. A dog trained with compulsion would reliably recall first time every time, regardless of environmental distractions, not to please its handler, but because it instinctively feared the negative consequence of a correction more.
I have a high prey drive b*tch & plan to purchase an e-collar when I can find a half way decent trainer to work with my dog & teach me how to use it.
I’ll star for some of my contacts who are far more knowledgeable about recall training. Good luck!
did you have this dog from puppy?if so re inforce you daddy it dog .if its a rescue good luck.you can try ;a special toy or food & command, [whistle] practise at home then take to a safe area . use something special like hot chicken Keep this as the best game in the world .dog needs to respect you its acting like a teenager. it may be a shibs/inu but you feed & house it.good luck.there is a reason we run the world not dogs x
The Emergency Recall– hence the name “emergency” should only be used under life or death situations, as mentioned before. It is not an everyday comeback and should not be misused in that way. To begin with a rock solid recall….here are some good management tips that will help as you progress:
1. Make sure your dog gets lots of exercise and off-leash time so that being off-leash is not a novel to him! Find a good dog park, and spend the afternoon giving him freedom.
2. During training when recalling your dog, you must be sure that he will like what he is being called to! If you regularly call him to things he doesnt like, he will stop coming to you- period. Do not call your dog when you are about to give him his worming tablet for the month, do not call him when you are ready to leave the dog park for home. Doing this, he begins to learn that coming back at all is not fun in this case!
3. Reward your dog for checking in (coming to you every now and again when not being called) This is important, especially for dogs like the Shiba Inu. Reward with either treats or a welcoming pat where he loves it best. Letting the dog know you are enjoyable to be around.
4. Until your dog is trained to respond to your recall cue DO NOT CALL HIM WHEN HES NOT LIKELY TO COME – GO AND GET HIM! For example….if hes at the dog park playing with other dogs, chasing a possum or greeting visitors at the front door, do not call him to come. Calling the untrained dog when you know hes probably not going to respond is teaching him that the recall cue is optional.
Since you have probably used your dogs current name in many different ways, he has probably gotten quite used to the sound of it, and doesnt take much notice when you say it any more. For the Emergency Recall however, you will need another word you can comfortably call your dog back with. Whether this be “Puppy” or “Doughnut” the choice is yours, and after hearing that word he will have to respond immediately and come back no matter what! This is what you are training towards with an Emergency Recall.
To begin with, you will need to train on-leash! Get someone to hold your dog about 10M away from your standing position. Call your dog by his everyday recall name, and move about getting his attention with whatever you can. He will come to you, and as he is almost there…..say his Emergency recall name and then give him big rewards when he reaches you! You will need to repeat this many times over. Once you are satisfied your dog is taking to it well, get someone to again hold your dog 10M back from you, this time calling him by the Emergency recall name. It is important you only say this name ONCE. When he reaches you, reward big and repeat until he has full understanding of what is going on.
Important rules:
*If you repeat the name this WILL NOT WORK
*If you dont practise this WILL NOT WORK
*If your reinforcements are not good enough this WILL NOT WORK
A good way to reinforce the name training at home is to call the Emergency word out at any random time during the day, but only if your dog is close to you, and in plain viewing sight…..and then reward! As you become better with the training, you can gradually call him from further away positions. Then try training in different environments. From here it will take a lot of work! But these are pretty much the basics and pointers to getting a rock solid recall.
Are you having difficulty with recall in general, or is it that you are looking for a recall to use for real emergency ie he runs towards a road?
If it’s the latter, then this is a technique I’d recommend.
It’s know as the Rolls Royce recall and used by a breeder of Afghan Hounds. I don’t know if you know, but Afghans are one of THE worst breeds to trust off lead; yet this style worked great for her and her dogs.
Anyway, 1) what you need to do is find a food that your dog REALLY likes, but never gets eg. Lamb, steak.
2) Now think of any word to associate with this food, eg. Smelly?? Repeat your chosen word, and when your dog looks at you feed him tiny strips of the food, praising him enthusiastically as well.
3) keep repeating until your dog learns that –smelly– means –beef– .
4) once you’ve mastered that, go into a different room in your house and say –smelly– . If he comes running, feed him small strips of the –beef– and overly praise him. If he doesn’t, then he still hasn’t made the connection, and more practice is needed.
5) after a week of practicing this in the house, progress to your garden; if you don’t have a garden, then just outside your house. Your dog needs to be out of sight, and when ready say the word; if he comes reward with the –beef– if not, retreat back to the previous step.
6) if that weeks plan went well, it’s time to hit the park! Make sure there are no distractions and that your dog is on a long training lead. Just walk along, and whenever you want say the word. (I’m sure you know the next step!)
7) presuming that week was successful, he can practices off lead now.
Etc etc.
Basically you just need to make sure he associates a certain word with an amazing food that be will only get in this recall. And don’t out do it either, or it won’t be *special*. Once he had it mastered, I’d practice at least once a week. Though the RRR does take around 5/6 weeks to securely teach.
** if it was the first, which I doubt it was, then you need to go back to basics, recall on a training lead, secure areas, lots of praise etc**
I hope I’ve helped! If I’ve made no sense, then feel free to email me.
A reliable recall, emergency or not requires the use of adversives. The dog needs to learn that there is no choice in whether to obey the command. Every time the dog has an opportunity to disobey the command he has learned that he has a choice. Dogs with high prey drives and independent natures can be very difficult to get reliable recalls. Note: I did not say impossible, I said difficult.
Since this dog is on leash most of the time, start incorporating random recalls in your walks and in other parts of your daily life. Since this dog and you have had the training, it is time to put it to good use. Call the dog away from his food dish, off of the bed, and when he really wants to chase the rabbit or squirrel. Call this dog to you from a dead run. Make sure that you wear gloves because long lines can burn the crap out of your hands. Make sure that you are in the position to make this dog obey instantly by using a long line or a tab. Be sure to praise heavily for obedience. Do this often during the day. Take your dog to an enclosed area like a fenced yard, a tennis court or a dog park, drop the leash, and do many random recalls. If the dog refuses to come on the first command, walk him down, pick up the leash and yank his rear to you. Do not take no for an answer. Remember to praise and repeat the exercise. Finally shorten the leash until it’s a tab. At last remove the leash entirely. Work in many areas and around many distractions.
The proper use of an e-collar will help a lot but it will not take the place of good thorough training. Keep in mind, dogs are very bright about e-collars. They know when it’s on and when it’s off. Again with an “emergency” recall the dog may not have the e-collar on. This is why it is important to establish the foundation that “COME” means you had better be on your way back to me NOW. Training dogs like this takes a lot of time, patience and repetition.