OB820: Control Games: Secondary Obedience for Protection Sports

The Call-Off

One way to add value to your recall is to teach your dog that the recall is the most important cue and they should respond to it even if they are sent to a reinforcer such as a bite. Teaching this advanced step will help ensure that all of your recalls are as strong as they can be.

The steps to teaching your dog that the recall is more important than the task they were sent to do begins with teaching them to call-off a controlled behavior such as sending to a place. Then we can increase the difficulty by choosing a higher arousal behavior such as wrapping around an object and reinforcing with a toy. Finally, we can swap out the behaviors for sending to a reinforcer like a food bowl and recalling our dog before they get to the bowl.

For part one of this behavior, we are using our dog’s informal recall cue as well as not requiring a final recall position. Instead, we are focusing on teaching the concept that they should respond immediately to our recall and they do not need to stay committed to the task they were sent to do. In part two, we will introduce the formal recall cue, increase the level of reinforcer we send to as well as the add in the final recall position.

Begin by sending your dog to the platform. Reward your dog for going to the platform as well as when you call them to reset them. Once your dog is committed and happily going to the platform when cued, remind them about their informal recall cue for a couple of reps (give the cue, reinforce with food). Then when you send to the platform, immediately call your dog back. Mark and reward with a jackpot when they respond.

The number of reps that you send your dog to do the behavior versus the number you call off will vary for each dog. It’s extremely important that you do not decrease the commitment to the behavior or add in any hints or subtle cues that you will be recalling as both of those can decrease the value of the recall cue itself.

Once your dog is responding instantly to their recall cue, change the behavior to something more exciting such as wrapping around an object. I also like to swap out my food reinforcers for toys at this point to increase arousal. Repeat the same steps as before.

The final stage of this aspect of training the call-off is to teach our dogs to recall away from a reinforcer. It is important to know your dog’s hierarchy of reinforcers for this step. For dogs that prefer toys over food, calling off of a food bowl and reinforcing with a toy would be the ideal setup for this part. For a dog that prefers food over toys, recalling away from a toy and reinforcing with food would be better. Regardless, it’s good practice to send your dog to the reinforcer they called off of after they recall, that way they get their cake and eat it too.