Help please - beagle is running off at every available opportunity...

[saltyseadog]

We rescued a one year old beagle x spaniel dog at Easter. He is great in every way except for the fact that he now (following our recent move to somewhere very rural) runs off at every available opportunity, including when we are out on walks. He gets heaps of exercise, so it's not that he doesn't get out much and then makes a bid for freedom as soon as he can.

Does anyone have any advice r.e recall? I know that some of this will be his beagle DNA coming to the fore - however I refuse to believe that he can't be trained.

Thanks

Every time you feed him he has to sit and he is only allowed to eat when you blow his whistle. Over months his brain will associate the whistle with food.

Is he very into food?

Reasonably so - not as much as our lab needless to say. That sounds like a good idea, thanks.

btw that is how they train assistant dogs for recall and how my dog trainer friend was telling mutual friend how to train her nightmare puppy so it should work?

Nothing compares to a lab with regards to being "into food" does it

Nope. My lab could be trained to do anything I reckon if food was offered as an incentive

I'll give it a whirl with the speagle - when he deigns to join us again.