Dec 8

Dec 8 Progress Report: One Month After Starting From Scratch With How To Train Dog Recall

When you call your dog to come in a variety of settings, how likely are they to immediately run to you? If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I “started over” with my “hunty-sniffy” dog Sully’s recall about a month ago.

In my first article, I talked about what recall actually is, why I changed Sully’s recall cue, and how I started working with the new cue (among other things). In my second article, I talked about my effort to capture and build attention as a foundation for recall.

What changes have I seen in the past month (keep scrolling!)? What am I keeping an eye on? Let’s dig into my one-month update!

Recall Priorities: Build Behavior First

Before I started from scratch with working on recall with Sully, she used to routinely side step around me in the woods like I was an obstacle to avoid in her sniffing path.

While I introduced a new recall cue to Sully (you can learn more about that process here) a month ago, I’ve actually devoted very little of my time and energy to training with that recall cue. I’ve done two formal training sessions with it and paired it with human food she loves (as the opportunity arose) if I was planning to share with her anyway. That’s it.

The vast majority of my effort this month has gone towards building desired behavior on trails without any verbal cues.

There are three main behaviors I’ve been focused on:

Offering attention (i.e. voluntarily looking at me or orienting to me)
Coming all the way to me when I mark or drop a treat on the ground
Eating the treat I offer

I talked about this process more in my previous article, but as a refresher, here’s what I’ve been doing for the past month:

On our daily trail walks, we stop at least once to play a simple attention game (it’s quick - usually no more than 30 seconds). Sometimes it’s a stationary up-down game while other times it involves more movement. (You can see quick examples of stationary and moving games we play in this post we shared. I also shared how-to’s at the very bottom of this article. Plus, if you really wanna work on attention, check out our on-demand video e-course, Attention Unlocked!)
On our daily trail walks, we capture any and all attention that she offers. Literally. Every single instance. That means that if she stops and orients to us or looks at us, we give her a treat.

In Recall Training The Secret Sauce Is ‘Simple Is Sustainable’

Perhaps you noticed that nothing that I’m doing is earth shattering. Maybe you noticed that I’ve done almost no “formal training sessions.”. The bulk of my work is happening on our trail walks - an activity that is already a habit for me. This is intentional and here’s why:

Foundations first. If I can’t get some of the “simpler behaviors” to show up, I set us up for failure if I move past them. Plus, just because I know how to do “more complex” things doesn’t mean that is what I should be doing. Our progress has come from consistently working on simple foundations.
You want to see change? Then you generally need consistency. And I know that I do simple things more consistently than complex things. It’s harder for me to consistently carve out training sessions from my day than it is to pause for 30 seconds on a walk (especially with Sully – I have much less of an R+ history for training her than I do with my other dog, Otis). So I do what I know I can do consistently.

How To Make Magic: Collect Data

When I first started talking about our recall journey, I mentioned wanting to do this systematically – including taking data. Data are really important to the training process. They help us determine how to intervene and if our interventions are working as expected.

Given all the effort I am putting into building attention, how do I know “if it’s working”?

DATA!!!

I have been measuring the number of instances of “offered attention” per daily hour-long walk. I defined an instance of “offered attention” as Sully looking at us (eye contact), stopping and turning at least her head towards us (with or without eye contact), and/or walking up to us and pausing (with or without eye contact). Anecdotally, the majority of her instances include eye contact. (Some dogs don’t love eye contact, so I am fine with a general orienting behavior.)

Admittedly, I am not being as precise as I could be. I keep count in my head as we walk and jot down the total on my phone at the end of the walk. I undoubtedly screw up my counts, but ultimately, this isn’t a formal study. I am just looking to get a sense of the overall trend (I want to see the count trending upward).

When I first started this journey, this number was so low (between zero and three) that it was easy to count. It’s gone up so much over the past month (now she regularly offers around 30 instances of attention per daily hour-long trail walk) that I likely need to revise my data strategy.

If I wasn’t seeing her offer more attention on walks, I would have revised my strategy.

Behavior Update: A Quick Summary

Sometimes you gotta start slow to go fast in the end. My partner, Ben, and I have been getting such a kick out of the changes we are seeing in Sully after a month of work (remember: we didn’t do any fancy training; we just did simple stuff consistently).

Typical Number of Instances of Offered Attention Per Hour-Long Walk

One Month Ago: 0 to 3
Today: ~ 30

When we’re walking together, I have gone from an obstacle for Sully to avoid in her sniffing path to a signal for valued reinforcers in many contexts. I won’t lie: that feels nice 😂.

Many of the check-ins she offers happen when she is within 15 feet of us (she’s rarely farther than that because that’s the length of her dragline). However, the other day she was in pursuit of some poop to roll in and got a bit farther away from us. I knew I had no business trying to call her, so I just waited. And guess what she did after she rolled in the poop for 10 seconds? She SPRINTED the 30 yards to me. Everything about her behavior gave me the sense that she was certain she would get a treat when she showed up to me. This is what I want! It tells me that contingencies are clear and that my reinforcers are competing well enough in this environment. In an ideal world, I see this type of “recall behavior” show up more and more before I ever add a verbal cue.

Guess what else I am seeing?! When we verbally prompt her (with her name or a kissy noise), she is responding by orienting to or coming to us more often. Now to be fair, I am not measuring these data right now, so I am just going off what I think I have noticed (but given that she was basically unresponsive most of the time a month ago, it’s not hard to see the change). You can see a clear example of this at the end of this post we shared this week where I said her name to simply see if she could look at me (she chose to run all the way to me).

Will Your Treats Compete?

If you have a dog who doesn’t consistently eat outside, please know you are in good company. That used to be Sully. And it could be Sully again tomorrow if I don’t set her up for success (by that I mean arrange conditions in ways that I know make it likely for her to perform the eating behavior).

For the past month, we’ve been primarily using boiled shredded chicken breasts, baked chicken thighs, or ground beef as our treats, and she has consistently been eating them. We only use these as treats when we do our trail walks to try to reap some of the benefits of novelty when it comes to reinforcer value (without using food deprivation). The novelty can boost the value of reinforcers, which can help them compete with nature, increase the reinforcing strength of the treat, and make eating behavior more likely (as well as any behavior that produces the opportunity to eat).

I spent a number of months (a while ago) focused on building her eating behavior, but I still have to be careful. I am intentional in how I progress to make it more likely for my treats to compete. For example, when I first started working on attention pattern games (a while ago), we played indoors with very few distractions so that the desired behaviors were likely to show up. Then we slowly moved to more distracting settings (only as fast as I could keep the desired behavior stable). Now those patterns games are ones I can use in new environments to help get eating behavior to show up there (since the eating behavior already shows up in those pattern games under generalized conditions).

On a day when I only have string cheese (which is still high value but less novel), I am less likely to offer food early in the walk. Early in the walk, nature is more novel and therefore higher value, and cheese doesn’t compete as well. After about 15 to 20 minutes, I can count on her eating cheese.

The precursor to everything I have been talking about is having a reinforcer that your dog will reliably perform to access. In my case, that’s food, which means I need to count on Sully coming towards me to eat the food (that’s a behavior) when I offer it on trails before I can really use food as a reinforcer on trails. If you aren’t getting the eating behavior consistently when you just offer “free food,” you likely need to change your antecedents. Where will your dog consistently eat the food you offer? Start there and then bring the behavior into new environments. (Note: I am just thinking out loud here because this comes up so often. I am not giving specific advice. One of the first things you should check if your dog is not eating consistently is their health..)

Fringe Benefits

Historically, I haven’t always loved training Sully. She doesn’t opt into training as often around home (she prefers to sleep under an old poplar tree or patrol the yard) and tends to offer fewer behaviors that I find really reinforcing (like looking at me, coming to me, asking me for attention). I just have less of a reinforcement history for working with her than I do with Otis. One of the real benefits of focusing so much on capturing attention has been how much reinforcement I am getting from this for “training” her. I am seeing behaviors I love more (since I am looking for them and then reinforcing them). I now have a nice, recent R+ history as I approach the next phase.

What’s Next?

I will keep reinforcing the heck out of attention on our walks, but I am likely going to put a bit more effort into working on recall using our new verbal cue around home, where I can control the level of distraction. Stay tuned!

Reminder

I am very realistic when it comes to Sully. I don’t expect to turn her into Otis. I expect to make progress, but my goal is not to create a dog who stares at me all of the time. She is still my “wild child,” and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I anticipate that I will always be a bit choosy about where I drop her dragline and what criteria I have for that decision, and that is perfectly okay for us!

Addendum: My Go-to Simple Attention Games on Walks

I like to pause like this on hikes now to play attention games with Sully (Otis insists on joining in the fun too!) like the up-down pattern game seen above.

A number of people asked in an Instagram post this week what attention games I play on walks, so I am sharing the two most common ones here!

Simple Up-Down Pattern Game (popularized by Leslie McDevvit)

To play:

Place a treat down on the ground in front of your dog’s paws for them to eat.
When they eat it, they should naturally lift their head up. Mark (you can say “yes” or use a location specific marker like “find it”) and reinforce (place another treat down in the same spot in front of your dog’s paws.
Quietly wait for them to orient up towards you. (Many dogs will look up at you, but if that is uncomfortable for your dog, general orientation towards you works just as well!)
When they do look/orient to you, mark and reinforce with another treat in the same spot. Keep repeating.

Tips:

This game is about capturing offered attention, so you want to avoid prompting your dog by saying their name or pointing to your eyes.
Your dog is allowed to look around. Just wait for them to look up.
If they aren’t looking up at you consistently, you may need to start in a lower distraction environment.

Pattern Game with Movement