I have a six month old cocker spaniel puppy.
We started very early on practising recall training. After a lot of practice, we slowly and gradually built it up to having confidence to letting him off his lead completely and all was going well. No issues at all.
However, he has an unbelievable sense of smell, a lot stronger than any other spaniel we have owned.
The other week, I took him to our local country park with a friend and her cocker spaniel. We go there at least once a week. We normally park up in the car park and then about half an hours walk within the country park, we let them off their leads in an open field space for a good play and run around. He is generally well behaved. He has learned phrases that we use for "Come here right now and you will get a treat" and he always responds. All was going well until he put his head down and sprinted off. It was terrifying as he followed his own scent and sprinted off back to the car! I ran after him, shouting the key phrase, but he ignored me. Although he was fast, I finally luckily managed to get him back on his lead before any accidents happened.
The second time, my DH came with me. The plan was to set the scene with what happened the first time but this time, my DH purposely held back down the path to block him. With a plan in place, lots of treats in my pocket, I let him off in the open field. I was playing ball fetch with him. The problem seems to be that he is more interested in scents than his ball or anything else. Again after a few minutes he put his head down, picked up his own scent on the path and took off, sprinting back. This time, DH was there to leash him.
How do we deal with this? As I say, I have never known a dog to have such a strong sense of smell and somehow we need to out train the habit of picking up his own scent and retracing his steps.
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The doghouse
Recall going badly!
16 replies
Crazyladee · 24/11/2018 09:51
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