I’ve spoken to a few people recently about using long training lines to assist recall success by showing your dog you make tonnes of decisions each walk simply with the use of directional changes.
If recall is still a bit hit or miss for you, I suggest you avoid walking in one long straight line and instead, keep changing direction! To try and help illustrate this I’ve dug out some video footage I took a couple of years ago when I walked a new dog. You’ll see we are in Richmond Park with my trusty assistant, Chili dog. And on the way to the woods, in the grassy areas Olive was not interested in me at all. After a fair bit of changing direction in the woods we came back over the grassy section near Roehampton gate again and she was magnificent!
Click here to see video of us Changing Direction
What did you think? Due to the nature of the environment I was in going forwards and backwards was the most sensible thing to do. However, if I’m in an open field there’s nothing to stop me going in all sorts of different directions: left, right, forwards, back, circle, figure of eight etc etc! There really is no wrong move you can make as long as you are making the decisions to continually change direction.
Stay patient, enjoy the process, keep changing direction and arrive at success!
