Should you reward an AWOL Recall?
Sometimes it can be confusing what you are rewarding your dog for, or whether you should be rewarding them at all…
It has been a busy month here at Dog Citizen despite the holidays. As I was walking my dog trying to clear my head, we came across an owner trying to get their dog back. As far as I could see the dog had not been too far away. Nor were they doing anything especially undesirable. Just being a dog, that sort of thing. Anyway, after repeated attempts the dog did return to the owner, whereupon they were scolded for not paying attention in the first place. Or maybe just for “embarrassing” the owner. I don’t know. Hmmm.
What do I mean by AWOL Recall?
It got me thinking about more alarming scenarios though. The ones where your dog actually disappears from view. In a big way. What I mean by AWOL (Absent Without Leave) Recall is any time your dog does just that, or moves so far away from you that you no longer feel things are under control. You do try Recall but to no avail. Eventually the dog thankfully happens to decide to return to you after all. In their own time.
This could cover a range of scenarios: chasing wildlife can challenge any gun dog’s normally good training. Some dog breeds have strong “escape” drive instincts: some terriers for example, or the wonderfully-named Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen spring to mind. (If you have never seen one: google it – wonderful dogs.) Or some dogs simply have poor owner response. Whatever the particular scenario, what I call AWOL Recall is simply an extreme example of your dog not coming to you when called. But they end up coming back when they have finished their investigation of whatever the distraction was.
To praise, or not to praise
I get asked the question a lot with normal Recall training when we are looking at this on a smaller scale. Do I still reward her for coming back to me, even though it took ages? It’s a really good question, and not one that all trainers necessarily agree on.
What should the owner be doing?
Try to remain calm. This is really important. If a situation has escalated, this is one of the hardest things to do: exercise self-control. But the less frustrated or angry you are, the better chance we have of your dog feeling motivated to return to you. If your dog has bolted for the horizon, admittedly all bets are off, and I am not here to judge anyone. But it does depend on the scenario.
Is your dog running away from something, or towards something?
If your dog has been spooked by something, repeatedly calling them back while you remain fixed in place will not help. This is because you are asking your dog to return to the location of the spooky event happening. I am all in favour of letting your dog know where you are with the occasional shout or whistle as long as you are on the move away from that location. Dogs are good at locating sounds, so try to get closer to them but at a different angle from the location. And you can still remain calm while moving quickly! But desperate, repeated shouting is more likely to become noise to your dog and may only add to the panic. In flight mode, it will only confirm to your dog that something indeed scary needs to be distanced as quickly as possible!
If your dog is running towards something, possibly too far away for human ears or eyes, more often than not the target will either have escaped out of sight or be caught! Either way we have a quicker conclusion and hopefully being reunited with your dog is the happy ending.
Do you reward and what are you rewarding?
Dogs respond to training by being rewarded for the last thing they just did. It is not because they have short memories (far from it), but their brain works by repeating emotional associations with an action that just happened. This is how reinforcement works and why basic Obedience skills work: we reward a Sit to make it more likely to happen next time. Treat incoming! Or to turn it on its head, we might think we are rewarding a recall when our dog returns to us and then we make then do a Sit. In actual fact you are reinforcing the Sit, not the Recall.
Recall for a dog is an emotional event
For us humans, asking your dog to come back to you is simply a process. It may well be tinged with relief and joy in a dicey situation. But for a dog, coming back to their owner is an emotional event. It is special, and we need to reinforce that. So an AWOL Recall should always be rewarded. Once your dog is coming back to you, the thing that happened before is history. However belatedly, and however much it has underlined you guys might need some training after all, you can address that after the walk. For now, they have (finally) made the right decision to come to you. And the act of coming to you is a big deal for your dog: as much about the heart as with the head.
Think about that owner berating their dog: would you feel inclined to return next time if you are met with a scary human who is cross with you? What is it that we want to reinforce here? Now you know! Always reward an AWOL Recall, and hopefully it is a very rare event for you!
