How to Have Perfect Off Leash Recall Without An E Collar (in 26 minutes)

If your dog doesn't come back every time you ask them to, this video is for you. I just want you to imagine your dog is off in the distance playing with other dogs, having the best time in the world. Maybe they're watching other off-leash dogs play, just like Bubbles is now, and you want to call them. You don't have their leash, and you're like, Bubbles, come! And you want them to turn around just like that. This video is going to show you exactly how to achieve that at any distance imaginable without your leash. My name is Ethan McMahon. I'm the owner of McMahon Dog Training. We're from San Diego, California, and we help hundreds of dogs every single day with common behavioral challenges such as reactivity, leash pulling, recall, puppy manners, anything you can possibly think of. And in this video, we're going to teach you how to perfect recall. Bubbles, come! So anytime you call your dog, they come running to you no matter what, whether you have treats, whether you don't have treats, whether you have a leash or you don't have a leash. So let's get started. I'm not going to waste any of your time here. Before we start teaching our dog recall, we are going to need a few tools. The first thing we're going to need is either treats or a toy. We don't have our toy out yet. We're going to bring it out in a minute. We'll show you which toy to use, but you need something that's going to motivate your dog in an area that is not too distracting. I like choosing a nice open field on a quiet day. It is a Thursday right now at about 11 a.m., so people are at work. Fields are not too busy, but you're going to need treats or a toy, something that motivates your dog when you are out in public in a place like a field. The next thing you are going to need is a leash. Not just any leash, but a very long leash because when our dog is being called and they ignore us, we need some way to reel them on back in so they know that they can't ignore us. I recommend using a 30-foot leash because it gives you just enough distance to have your dog really far away from you, but not too much distance so that if they run off, you get pulled over. The last thing you're going to need is a training collar. We recommend using either a flat collar, a metal choke collar, or a prong collar depending on your dog's sensitivity levels to corrections. Here on Bubbles, we use the metal choke collar. It is just enough so if we need to give him a little pop, he knows exactly what it means and he knows how to follow that leash pressure. To recap, you will need treats or toys, a long leash, a training collar, and a mildly distracting environment. We're going to break recall training down into three super simple steps. Step one is going to be prep work. Step two is going to be teaching them the command, and step three is going to be proofing the command with distractions. Let's get into step one, which is what we call having proper prep work. Before we teach our dogs recall, there's a few things that they have to know. The first thing is going to be name recognition. If our dog does not know their name, if we can't call their name and get their attention from a distance, this is going to be a nightmare for us. Bubbles, yes, good job. Notice how when I say Bubbles' name, he immediately looks to me as if he knows something is about to happen. I can take a few treats, throw them on the floor, maybe get him searching for some food, right? We'll distract him. And if I want to say Bubbles, yes, he immediately looks to me even when there is food on the ground. You need to make sure your dog knows their name. If your dog doesn't know their name, you can play something called the name game. All you do is stand right next to your dog, call their name once, Bubbles, yes. And once they look at you, you mark and reward. You do that over and over again. If they can't do it inside the house, then try it outside the house. Once your dog understands their name, you need to make sure that they have a marker or a marker word such as a clicker or a yes. This is a sound we make to let our dogs know they just did something awesome and they're about to get a treat. He's distracted right now. There's a pack of dogs walking behind us. If I say yes, he looks at me like, oh my gosh, you just said the marker word. Something good is about to happen. This is going to be so important because we need our dogs to know that the second they came to us, the second they made contact with our hand, they're going to get rewarded. Yes. Notice how when I use that yes word, it's almost like the name. He knows he's about to get a treat. Maybe he did something good. Maybe he did nothing at all. He just knows yes equals treat. If you want to know more about marker words, I would highly suggest checking out the link in our description, which is our canine pro online dog training course, where we break down everything you need to know about dog training from the theory behind it, to marker words, to any behavioral challenge such as puppy training, obedience, or reactivity. If you need to know more about marker words, click that link, check it out. But basically all it means is it's a sound we make or a word we say to let our dog know they're about to get a treat. Yes. You can see he looks at me intently every time I say that word yes, because he knows he's about to get food. The last thing for prep work is your dog needs to be motivated by something. Your dog needs to be motivated by toys or motivated by food. A lot of trainers don't say this, but I'm going to say this. Affection is not a good enough motivator when you're teaching recall. Good boy. See, when I come and I tell Bubbles he's a good boy, I pet him, he doesn't really care. He just walked away from me while receiving affection because there's smells, there's people, there's dogs, and so many competing motivators, and affection for me is something he gets all the time. Every time we wake up in the morning, we love him. We tell him he's a good boy. When he's doing good on his walks, we tell him he's a good boy. Whenever he makes any good decision, we tell him he's a good boy. But it's not something that motivates him the same way food does. You can see with food, he will do anything. He'll do his little sit pretty heel. He'll come right next to me for a treat. He loves food. He won't work this hard for affection. He is the exact same way with toys. I want to say he's even more motivated by toys. I didn't even bring a toy for this section of training because he wouldn't even focus on distractions. He is just going to look at the toy the entire time. Your dog has to be motivated by something. They have to want to work for something. If your dog is not food motivated, or your dog is not toy motivated, when you are in an environment like this with a park, and there's a lot of stuff going on, there's dogs here, there's kids here, there's people here, bring your dog to these environments more often to desensitize them. Grab your long leash, come here, and just hang out for like 10-15 minutes. Let them soak everything in. Don't call them. Don't try to do training. Don't try to communicate with them at all. Just be neutral. Just do nothing. Just let your dog hang out. Let your dog check all this stuff out and let them get used to it. Offer them food periodically, maybe every 5 minutes, every 10 minutes. And as you'll notice, if you do this at home, if you really take this advice and use it, your dog will start to take food like magically. Oh my god, they just took a treat for the first time. It's also really important that if you're building food motivation, you're using high value food. So stuff like freeze dried meat, air dried meat, mozzarella string cheese, these are all things dogs love. You can use fresh chicken. Stay away from like milk bones. Stay away from brands like Zooks. I used to use them, but they're not the best. Stay away from kibble. Anything that has a lot of fillers, like a lot of vegetable glycerin, potato starch, dogs don't really like that stuff. As far as toys, we recommend toys that are fun that you can play tug with. The Kong Wubba is a toy I really like. I'll probably insert a clip right here of me and Bubbles playing around with the Kong Wubba. It makes a lot of noise. It's very squeaky. We're not sponsored by them. Just a toy that most dogs seem to love. So your dog has to be motivated by something. Recap on the prep work. You need your dog to be motivated. You need a yes marker word that gets their attention. And they also have to be able to respond to their name. So even if your dog is sniffing the ground, we'll say, checking out all the treats, whatever it is, you need to be able to call them and have them look at you. Now let's get into how to teach your dog the recall command. So if you've seen our videos on Instagram or TikTok before, then you probably know to teach recall, we teach our dogs to touch our nose to our hand. Sorry, touch their nose to our hand. The reason we do this is because if I say, Bubbles, come, and he walks towards me and he just sits, all he did was come towards me and sit. He could have sat three feet away from me, five feet away from me, 10 feet away from me. It's not directly clear what I'm rewarding him for. He might just think he's being rewarded for the sit. So instead of just sitting, I want him, yes, to touch his nose to my hand, to make direct contact with my hand. So when I tell him to come to me, it is very clear what I'm asking. I'm going to show you guys how we teach this to our dogs. I'm going to show you exactly how to do it. So this first step you want to do, I'm going to come real close to the camera, down, stay. I'm going to get real close to the camera for you guys. You want to take some treats and like rub them in your hands. So your hands smell like treats. You want treat residue on your hands. No treats in your hands whatsoever. All you're going to do is you're going to go up to your dog and hold your hand in front of their nose. Since it smells like treats, they should accidentally touch it. Yes. Once they make contact, you are going to mark with your word, yes, reach into your pouch and reward. Yes. And you're going to repeat this over and over again. Yes. Bubbles has been trained to do this already. So you can see he's doing it extremely quickly. Yes. Do this about five times. So I'll do it one more time. Yes. You want them to know that they're getting rewarded for making contact with your hand. Once they're able to do it in a sitting or lying down position, you are going to want to have them walk to your hand. So I'm just going to drop my hand down. Yes. And reward. I'm going to move around a little bit. So I'll come this way. Yes. Then I'll reward. And as you can see, I'm not saying anything to them yet. I'm not even saying the word come. All I'm doing is just dropping my hand. Yes. Good job. Because I want them to understand the behavior itself before I start adding a word to it. A lot of times when we're training our dogs to respond to verbal commands, people will mess up by introducing the verbal command too early, introducing it too soon. They start shouting a word at a dog before they even know what the behavior means. Worse yet, they'll repeat the word over and over. So let's say bubbles come, come, come, bubbles come. And then by the time that they start actually figuring out what it means, they're already desensitized to the word because you said it 10 times before they actually did it. A big part in training him to respond to us verbally is going to be teaching him that he has to do it the first time we say it. So I'm going to do this a few more times where I hold my hand nice and low. Yes. And then I will reward. Once your dog understands this, you're ready to introduce the word. You're ready to introduce the true recall command. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to say bubbles come. We're only going to say the word once and we're going to shout it every time we say it. These are the two big rules I need you to remember. If you take away anything from this video, it's this right here. When you're teaching your dog recall, shout the command loud and only say it once. And if your dog does not come back the first time you say it, use the leash to bring them towards you and don't give them food for it if you had to make them do it. That's the simplest way to teach recall. The reason you want to shout commands at your dog is because when they're 50 feet away from you and you're recalling them, you're not going to say bubbles come. You're not going to be talking like that because you're going to need them to hear you. You're going to be shouting like bubbles come. Yes. Good job. You're going to be loud. So we want to teach our dogs that yelling at them is not a bad thing. Hey, it's not bad if I'm yelling at you. You're not in trouble. You don't have to get scared. You don't have to run away. It just means we're doing that thing where I'm telling you, you have to come back to me now and you're going to get a treat if you do it without me making you. So make sure you're very loud. The second thing, which is even more important than saying it loud is saying it once. It's the moment you say your recall command once and your dog doesn't listen. And then you have to say again and again and again, you begin negotiating with your dog. The first time you said it, it didn't carry any weight because after they made the decision to not come back to you, you didn't make them do it. So no matter how distracted your dog is, you have to say it once and never repeat yourself ever. If I were to say the command once with Bubbles right now, and he did not come back to me, I would grab this leash, make him come back to me, and I wouldn't give him a treat because he didn't make the decision to do it on his own. So we are going to start introducing that word. Remember, say it once and say it loud. So I'll maybe walk over here, create some distance. Bubbles, come. Yes. Good job, buddy. Who's such a good boy. You're such a good boy. And we're going to walk around a little more. Going to go say hi. Going to go socialize, interact with people. No, you just want your treats. Of course. Bubbles, come. Yes. Good job, buddy. Good job. Who's such a good boy. We're going to do this over and over and over and over again until it becomes like nothing to him. So there's a dog up ahead. He's walking towards it. Bubbles, come. And then right there, you can see. Oh, good boy. No reward right there because we had to make him do it. I don't know what he smelled, but he smelled something and it got his attention. So again, we have a dog right behind us who's sniffing the ground. Big white dog looks like a Samoyed possibly. Oh, he's sniffing the treats. That's why he didn't come back to me. He looks at the dog and we're going to call him now. Bubbles, come. Yes. He gets a treat right there because there was no leash correction. There was no me making him have to do it. You might have seen that when he didn't make it all the way back to me, I very quickly rubbed in that leash and ran backwards. And his ears went back a little bit. He was like, oh gosh, I, dad told me to come back and I did it. Now he's doing the thing where he Whenever you call your dog, they make the active decision to not come back to you. You have to very quickly address that situation. I said earlier, if you call them once and they don't come back, use the leash to make them come back, but don't just gently reel them in. Maybe gently reel them in. If you have a nervous dog or an anxious dog who gets stressed, but chances are most of you at home, your dog isn't not responding because they're anxious. They're just not listening to you because they don't want to, right? The moment your dog makes the decision to not come back to you, you have to make a big deal out of it. You have to be like, dude, that was the craziest thing you just ever did. I'm going to run in the opposite direction with this leash on you. And you're going to have no choice but to come back to me. You got to make a super big deal out of it. The second they make the decision to not come back to you. If I were to call him, if I were to be like bubbles come, and then he started sniffing the ground and I just stood here like, Oh, my dog's sniffing the ground. What do I do? He's going to learn in that moment. Well, I made a decision to sniff the ground and my dad didn't do anything about it. So it's okay. If I do this, if you try to correct the behavior, 10 seconds later, or 15 seconds later, it's not going to matter. It is not going to matter because dogs are so timing oriented. You have to punish a decision. The moment they make it, you can't punish a decision 15 seconds later, or their brains won't make the connection. So you have to make sure that when they don't come back to you, you do something about it. You grab the leash and you really reel them in. Now let's talk about how we can make this happen off leash, right? You probably have a long leash on your dog. Your dog's doing great. You're saying, Ethan, my dog is doing awesome. But whenever I take the leash off, they don't listen to me. That happens all the time. The reason it happens all the time is because we just go from holding the leash to taking the leash off, but there's a step you're missing. The step you're missing is letting the leash go. Letting your dog drag the leash. This is what I call semi-off leash. As you can see, Bubbles is, I'm not holding his leash. He knows it. There's dogs behind him, a whole pack of them. I can walk away and say, Bubbles, come. Yes. And even though he's still wearing the leash, I wasn't holding it. He knows I wasn't holding it. And this is what we call semi-off leash. If for any reason he were to take off on me, he were to run after those dogs after I called him, I can just step on it. Or better yet, I can just pick it up and I can hold it. It's like having a nice little safety line. Giving our dog the feeling of like, yeah, what's up? You're off leash. Yeah. What are you going to do? You are totally not on a leash. Go be free. Go. Of course he's not going to go be free. It's a little magnet. He won't walk away from me. But if he were to run off at a child, run off at a dog, I can just step on this. I can just pick it up. He knows that at any moment that leash could come back into play in his life. We want to practice recall with our dogs semi-off leash around distractions before we trust them to be totally off leash. So what we're going to do is we're going to walk over to the dog park over here. We're going to hang out around the dog park near all the dogs to show you exactly what this looks like. So why don't you come on guys are now coming closer to the dog park, this sidewalk right here, there's a bunch of dogs and we're going to practice our semi-off leash recall. So I'm going to let go of this leash and then I'm going to say bubbles come. Yes. Oh my God. That was so good. He's going to get a fat handful of treats right there because that was so amazing. What we want to do at this stage of recall training is we want to gradually get closer and closer and closer to as many distractions as we can. There's no dogs here right now, but there surely will be some soon. We want to get very, very close to these distractions. Let our dog's leash go and then call them. If they do not respond within one second, if they make the decision to ignore us, we're going to pick up that leash and reel them back in as fast as humanly possible. Like so quickly, you cannot believe it. Moving quick is the key to making this work, especially doing this off leash without an e-caller. So why don't you guys come with me? We're going to get a little closer to the distractions and let's go on a walk bud. As we get closer, I'm just going to let him go. I'm just going to let him be free, let him be a dog and at random when he's distracted, I'm going to say bubbles come. Yes. Good job. Good boy. And then we're going to give them big rewards there. That's such a good boy. You want your rewards to be huge when you're starting to give your dog more distance and introduce more distractions. You want them to know that you are the greatest thing that is out here in this whole entire world. You are such a good boy. That is amazing. You did so good. You can see I'm still giving them treats right now. I'm still giving them treats. He's a well-trained dog. I've had this dog for years, but for you guys at home, you want to make these memories, like core memories for your dog. So there's a dog over here. We'll walk towards it. Come on bud, let's go. Yeah. Right. So he's going to see that dog up there. And once he sees it, maybe he doesn't. We'll say bubbles come. Oh, good. But you don't get a treat right there. He does not get a treat because I had to call him. I called him one time and I had to correct him. You'll have to forgive me. My words are getting jumbled here. Let's continue to walk. Come on, let's go walk. And you can almost see after that, he's like not going too far away from me. He's a little hesitant. I don't want to go that far from you, dude. I was just sniffing something. You called me. I didn't respond. And then you totally yanked me. The reason we came to this park here is because we actually never take bubbles to this park ever. He hasn't been here in like three or four years. I figured there was going to be some smell that distracted him. We have a pretty good routine with them. There's a dog here. Let's go on a walk. You see that friend over there? Yeah, let's go walk, dude. There they are. Yeah, come on. It's right here. He's paying attention to me, which is good. We're going to walk. I know, you know, you're not supposed to go greet dogs off leash, but come on. I want you to get distracted. We're going to let them get distracted. Yeah, you go. Bubbles come. Yes. Good job. It's almost like you can see a demeanor shift after the correction. After the correction, you saw, I was so like, oh my God, you didn't come to me. I'm reeling you back in now. There's this little shift where he's like, hey, I'm not going to go that far from you. I don't want to get myself in trouble again. Right. Which is good. Our dogs need to have those learning moments again. They need to learn that if you say it once and they don't do it, there's going to be a consequence for that. And if you ignore it, it creates a memory. The memory of, oh, I, you called me and I didn't do it and it was fine. So right here, get a camera on bubbles. He's sniffing up. Nevermind. He just came to me right there. He was such a good boy. Yeah. Let's go walk. Come on, bud. We're going to go on a walk. So we're just going to walk around a little bit again. We got no hands on that leash right there. Come on, buddy. He's going to see a dog. Bubbles come. Yes. Good boy. Who's such a good boy. Yeah. It's such a good boy. Yeah. Oh my gosh. You did so good. And right there you can see since we're yelling at him, he's, he knows how to distinguish it from our regular talking. He knows how to distinguish me recalling him versus just me talking. That is one reason yelling is so important every day in your practice because it snaps their brain out of it. They go, oh my gosh, you just yelled at me. That means that the thing is about to happen. So you want to go on a walk, buddy. Again, we'll come this way. We'll walk a little bit with our little guy here. Let him get nice and distracted. As we can see, there's a couple of dogs up here. Bubbles come. Yes. Boom. And then we're going to reward who was such a good boy. You're going to get smaller treats because I'm running out. That is such a good boy. That is such a good boy. We got two dogs up here. Again, a lovely distraction. You want to go walk this way. He's going to see him. Bubbles come. Yes. And I want you to notice as I walk away from bubbles or as I recall bubbles, I am walking away from him. I am walking away as I recall him because I want him to know that he should be following me. I want him to follow my lead when I'm recalling him, not me following him. So we can look around, scan for some more distractions. There's dogs over there, but he really doesn't care about the dogs. He cares more about the smells than anything. So we will just go this way. Come on, bud. Let's go on a walk. Yeah. So we're just going to let him sniff. Let him explore. Go walk. Yeah. You go on a walk, bud. Let him get distracted. Let him hang out. I'm going to get you. Yeah. Have him get the zoomies a little bit. You should not chase your dog around. If you're training recall, you should not be doing this with your dog. Yeah. I'm going to get you. He's such a funny dog, right? We're playing, we're having fun. It's always good to have a little fun when you're training with them. Bubbles come. Yes. Good job. Good job. Good job. Oh, you're a good boy. You're a good boy. Yeah. That's such a good boy. And you can see every time I recall him, I make it rewarding. I make it fun. I make it lighthearted for him. Once you practice enough, semi-off leash, then you're ready to go the distance, which is taking your dog off leash. Now, before you guys take your dog off leash at home, you need a 100% success rate with semi-off leash recall. You should not have to correct your dog for months with semi-off leash recall before you take the leash off. Let's go on a walk. Yeah. Who's a good boy. So again, you do the same thing. You go walk with them. You hang out. Bubbles come. Yes. And then you call them. He's not going to go too far for me. And again, we are doing our best to follow the leash laws here. We do not like people who just let their dogs off leash, run up to everybody. But once you can see here again, he's sniffing, right? Bubbles come. Yes. Good boy. Barely made contact there, but dude, you know what? I will take it. You're ready for off leash recall when your dog is a hundred percent successful with semi-off leash recall for at least two months of practicing every single day in multiple environments, multiple distractions. You want dogs, you want people, you want smells, you want kids, you want like soccer balls, other dogs, playing tennis balls, different environments. Try this stuff in as many different environments as you can and be perfect with your semi-off leash before you go to completely off leash. Now, remember guys, the key elements here in this video that I want you to take away is only call your dog once. You never call your dog more than once. If you call them once and they don't do it, you make them do it. Yes. Good boy. You're a good boy. I'm sorry. I had to do that for the video. You are going to make them come back to you after you call them once. Call them loud every time you call them. Don't be afraid to shout. Don't be afraid of the whole park looking at you like you're a crazy person because your dog is going to know that bubbles come. When you're shouting, it's training time and it's going to make training happen a lot faster. Make sure you use your marker word all the time. Say the word yes the moment that their nose touches your hand. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. He's like, why am I not getting my damn treats? And then make sure to practice at home a lot and in low distraction environments a lot if this is not going well for you. If you guys have questions, if you guys need any pointers, we have an online group where we help people at home train their dogs to the absolute high stability canine pro online dog training. There's going to be a link in the description. It's only $97 a month and it includes everything you need to know about dog training from puppy training, puppy biting, potty training to adult obedience such as recall, teaching them a downstay, teaching them heel leash walking, all the things you need to know to have a well-behaved dog. And we also have a full blown reactivity course in there as well, where we teach you how to fix dog reactivity so you can heal. You can go on nice little walks with your dog, have them walk next to you in areas where there's other dogs sit down, stay, and they listen to you perfectly even if you're not rewarding them with treats. Once again, guys, my name is Ethan. I really hope you enjoyed this video and we'll see you in the next one.