If you are in need of ideas for improving your Dalmation’s recall, check out these tips to start doing so:
1. If you are in need of a nifty trick to break the monotony of calling a dog to your side, try to get it to come to you using one of those laser-beam ballpens. Just turn the device on, point the light to the ground, then watch the dog go zoom off to investigate the bright light! This training can prove very valuable if you want the dog to take a quick pee outside in winter.
2. When teaching recall, it is a given that there must be no shouting, especially if the student is still a puppy. No matter how annoyed or frustrated you are, there is no shouting in dalmation training.
3. Does the Dalmation like playing with a ball? Then so much the better for this next tip. Get another companion to stand away from you at a good distance, with the dog in the middle. This can be like a modified fetch, where the dog gets rewarded for returning the ball.
4. No dalmation training is complete if things do not turn out “unpredictable.” What does this mean? The idea here is that the dog needs to be mixed up and incapable of knowing where exactly a dog walk is headed for, or what signs indicate that the off-leash romp is over. With that, it is possible to get the dog to keep coming to you again and again.
For example, you want your dog not to get agitated at the sight of the lead, and not running away because it does not want to go back yet to the car. So the solution is to sometimes put the lead back on the dog and take it off immediately afterwards. If you do this often outdoors, the dog will get used to the sight of you approaching with a leash.
Another way to have unpredictable owner behavior is to make dog walks unpredictable, different from the typical walk of a straight line from door A to lampost B some 3 to 4 blocks away. Instead, go on zigzagging all over the street, crossing here and there, and walking abruptly in opposite directions. This needs to be done at faster than usual paces. With this, the dog gives up pulling and wanting to take off, and instead will want to stay by your side.
5. Lastly, try to elicit the help of a friend who happens to have a very obedient dog. Call the other dog and offer it a reward when it comes, but ignore your Dalmation first if it comes too. Then run away, calling your own dog, then give it a reward, and then go away again. The result of this is that the dog will want to keep an eye on you, waiting for you to call it and give it a reward.
