Dog on the Loose!

So one confession I have to make about one of my personal dogs: she has the worst recall EVER! Okay maybe not ever, but for a trainer it's pretty embarrassing. I think what's worse is her recall in the yard is absolutely amazing! At the dog park she is the best! She will come to me at a drop of a dime (no treats needed)! I even get a long lead and put on her to practice and she does amazing every single time! But if you give her one inch of freedom she is gone and is never coming back! It's almost become a right of passage in watching Sadie. She will run away from you. She's runaway from me, my boyfriend, my dad, my mom, my boyfriend's mom, and a really good friend who watched them when I was working 12 hours and afraid a grass fire was going to hit the town we live in. She now comes with a list of what to do when (not if) she runs off. I do believe this might have been one of the reasons she was returned to the shelter after being adopted. And by all means this is really her only bad habit.

I've pretty much come to the realization that she (unlike our other 3 dogs) cannot be trusted off leash ever! I'm okay with that; we've worked around it. There is a retractable leash for going potty (the only time I recommend and use such a thing) and a long horse lead when we go hiking or swimming. My only problem comes when that gate blows open or when the front door doesn't latch all the way. We've perfected the "wait" command, so much so that I've actually walked across the street with the front door wide open. I've even been able to leave my front door open while loading the car and haven't had to worry one bit about her bolting. She's a master at "wait," but what happens when I fail at it? Notice I say I failed, not her. She doesn't fail at it (like I said she's a master), but there are times that I fail at administering or practicing the "wait" command.

Today was such a day that I failed. We've been house sitting for my brother, which has been nice having a fenced yard to play in. The catch comes that the back yard is set up so you have to enter and exit through it to get into the house, which for the most part I love, because I can let the dogs out off leash while I set the alarm and then worry about the leashes after the door is shut and locked. However, when someone comes over and the gate doesn't latch is when we run into problems. I'm not laying blame on the visitors; it was in no way their fault. It had happen to me, but I was just luckily right by the gate before any harm could result. If anything it was my fault. It was my fault, because I had knowledge that the gate could do that and I didn't practice "wait" at the gate with Sadie like I should have.

However, it's these experiences that we get to practice the recall she so badly needs. Those times when there is not a leash attached or a fence she can't get out of. The ones where she fails miserably at almost every time. Let me give you back ground on Sadie's runaway habits. The first time it happened was 3 days after I adopted her. She took off when the leash came unhooked from her collar during the car ride and I was letting her out of the car. She ran for a mile and a half before a neighbor who was walking her dog at the time caught her and held her until I could get to her. When she stayed at my boyfriend's mother's house she probably got a good quarter of a mile to half a mile away after our female Boerboel opened the door for her. While staying at my parent's house one day while I was at work the front door blew open and she ran out. I'm not sure how far she got, but she was gone for about 45 minutes. So as you can tell usually when she's running away, she doesn't stop running for a long time. But the glorious thing that happened today, is she got three houses down and came to one of my brother's friends who ran out to help. This has never happened before! It's normally an ordeal and I have to get a familiar car (i.e. my car or my boyfriends car) in front of her in order to get her back. She never stops that soon! NEVER!

Well I do believe that our recall training is starting to pay off. It might be a slow road, but today was a glimmer of hope that things were starting to click. I think if I were to have treats on hand she would have come back quicker, but I won't know until next time.

As a trainer you never like to admit that your dog is less than perfect, but sometimes they aren't perfect. I believe my experiences, like this, give my clients the realization that I'm not a perfect pet parent all the time and my dogs are not perfectly behaved all the time. They get to see that I'm human too and I screw up just like they do. I think it helps (or at least I hope it does) the connection that we have; they get to see that my dogs aren't 100% all the time, they have their moments. I've had clients before tell me that their dog could never compare to mine, so I whip out these stories (or stories of potty training Pyrate) that let them see I have faults and my dogs have faults just like everyone else. They bring me down off of the pedestal they placed me on. It makes it easier for them to come to me with their problems because I have dealt with them before. They know I won't look down on them, because they are struggling with something; I will help them out and guide them through it.