Problem 02 · Recall

My dog won’t come back.

He comes when it suits him — when there’s nothing better on offer, when the other dog has gone, when he’s finished. So the lead stays on, and a dog that lives on a lead never really gets to be a dog.

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01 — Does this sound familiar?

You already know the list.

Owners describe this to us in almost identical words.

01Brilliant in the garden, gone at the park

02He comes back — when there’s nothing better on offer

03Fine until another dog appears, then you don’t exist

04You call once, twice, then pretend you meant to walk that way

05He hears you — he looks at you, and carries on

06The long line lives in the boot and never comes off

07You’ve become the least interesting thing in the field

08You’ve quietly stopped letting him off at all

02 — Why it happens

It isn’t stubbornness. It’s arithmetic.

Three things are usually running at once, and none of them is defiance.

Cause 01

Coming back is a bad deal

Recall ends the fun — lead on, game over, home. The dog has done the maths, and the maths says keep running.

Cause 02

The word is worn out

He’s heard his name a hundred times with nothing behind it either way. It isn’t a cue any more — it’s background noise.

Cause 03

Freedom came before the skill

He was off the lead before the recall was proofed, so the thing he’s actually rehearsed — hundreds of times — is ignoring you.

03 — What we actually do

Change the deal. Then prove it.

The order matters more than the technique. Most recall work fails because the dog keeps getting free chances to ignore you.

Watch what your dog actually rates

Food, a ball, a tug, other dogs — we find out what he’d cross a field for, because that’s the currency the recall gets paid in.

Assessment

Reset the word

A new cue, taught properly, paid every time, and never wasted. The old word carries too much history — we don’t argue with it, we replace it.

Weeks 1–2

Long line, no gambles

Freedom without the free chances. The line means he can’t rehearse ignoring you while the new recall gets strong.

Weeks 2–4

Add the hard stuff on our terms

Distraction at the paddock — dogs at distance, movement, scent — introduced deliberately, when the recall is ready for it.

Weeks 4–6

Prove it somewhere real

The marshes, the beach, the park — off the line, with the world happening. It doesn’t count until it works somewhere you didn’t choose.

Weeks 6–8

04 — Straight about this one

What we will and won’t promise you.

What usually changes

Your dog gets to be a dog again.

✓Off-lead walks come back — with a dog who checks in
✓One call, one response — not five calls and a shrug
✓More freedom, not less — that’s the point of the work
✓A plan for the day it goes wrong, because one day it will

What we won’t say

That a 100% recall exists.

✕That any dog recalls every time — no dog on earth does
✕That it’s sorted in one session
✕That you can skip the long-line stage — that stage is the work
✕That we can guarantee it — dogs aren’t machines and outcomes vary

05 — Where this usually goes

One of two, and the assessment decides which.

Most recalls

The Fix

One named problem, six to eight weeks, with the outcome written down before we start. Recall is the classic Fix.

If there’s more to it

The Transformation

When the recall problem is tangled up with reactivity or chasing, it needs the longer runway — ten to twelve weeks with support in between.

Both run in person or online · Neither is sold on the day you meet us

Let’s see the dog before anyone talks about money.

There’s no price on this page on purpose. What it costs depends on what we find, and we can’t find it from a form.