why does she run off????

My ruby is well behaved in the home, she comes to call, sits, lies down, rolls over and generally listens to what i say. but when it comes to walking shes great on her lead but when i let her off she runs off in bushes, chases birds, doesnt come back to call and the walk ends up in a search. Ive tryed almost everything i take balls squeky toys treats and she still wont come back!
Advice would be most welcome

how old is she? If she is just a puppy, a bit more off leash training would help a great deal. I remember one instance when Ilsa was a pup I lost her for an hour in central park, she was chasing a squirrel. I had thought she was well trained (and underestimated her speed). In the end I was calling her hysterically and she came back to me happy and thirsty, curious why I was so upset. I didn't let her off lead again for a year, and tried tried to retrain her to come. It's difficult but as city dwellers I know she needs to run off leash in the park, and the dog runs are filled with large, dirty dogs and I don't take her in those places.

She is fine now and always stays where I can see her. If you have a puppy I'd say she just needs more training and isn't ready to be off leash in an unsecured area. If she's an adult, I don't know, but she probably needs more work on recall as well.

Jen and Ilsa

do you used a fixed lead or one that expands? Amanda used to be like that, but I went out and get an expandable lead. I keep it really close, but then give a command and release it. She can run up to like 30ft from me and then I give the recall. took a little bit but amanda figured out that if I let her run around whereever and then came within a few seconds of calling she gets to sleep with me instead of the crate...and up here in COLD PA she LOVES the bed with blankets.

I know what you are going through. I have the same problem with my Rosie. I always managed to get her back but last year I lost her for two hours in a 70 acre wood. I thought I never see her again and it was only luck that someone found her exhausted under a bush. My other dog run of with her but turned around and came back to me but Rosie just kept running. The problem is that once her nose hits the ground that is it she just runs. In the home, garden, obedience class she listens really well. I tried training her slowly on a training lead, I tried treats.
I am interested to see what other people suggest.

I did train her off lead in a fenced in area outside by making her follow me using her treats as bait. If she didn't listen I'd put her back on the leash and put her treat away while she was watching. I'm too soft to yell at her so it took a while but it did work. She understood eventually that if she didn't come when called she wouldn't get to run free at all. You have to be vigilant and make sure you catch them not listening quickly before they start going at full speed.

I often wish she had a yard but now we can enjoy the park properly. Especially in the city where parks have streets going through them. So dangerous! Now if she starts going she understands the command "wait", and I go catch up with her, (or put her on lead if she's near a street), so she knows she can still go play where she wants as the park is her time.


Jen and Ilsa

shes one year old, and a few months ago she was fine off lead, never went too far away always came back but just recently shes got all cocky thinking she can do as she wishes. I deffinatly think alot more recall training is needed, there is a great advice thing on this site so am going to use that and just keep trying. I use a fixed lead at the minute, will consider getting a expandable one. Its just so frustraring when she was fine off lead before, and i panic alot when she goes misssing in the bushes. Any further advice would be greate and im glad to hear im not the only cav owner with this problem becasue it makes me feel like a lousy trainer. But i am going to keep trying i so want her to be let off lead safely becasue she loves it.

Daisy is the exact same way. I cannot trust her off-lead. She will follow her nose or eyes to anything interesting, completely heedless of cars, big mean dogs, etc. I just can't risk it. I hate that because my past dogs have always just stayed with me, with really no training to speak of. Daisy is just very different from them. We've been through Obedience I,II, and III, but she just is not trustworthy. I'd love to find a huge, fenced-in safe area where I could work with her on her recall, but I just haven't found such an area.

The other day she slipped out the garage door that was inadvertently left open. I panicked, of course and ran outside when I noticed the open door. She was across the street sniffing in the neighbor's yard, thank God! I said "Daisy, Treat!" and she came at a flat-out run straight to me, which impressed me a lot! Sometimes I think she may warrant a bit more trust from me than I give her, but if something happened to her, I would never forgive myself. She used to have a horrible car-chasing habit, which I have mostly cured, but every once in a while on our walks, she will still jump toward a passing car. That scares me to death that she would literally throw herself under the wheels of the first passing car if she were off-leash. She knows no fear of any moving object -- they are all prey to her.

Good luck to you and let us know what works if you get her figured out.

I would go back to basics if I were you.

Get a long line (a 60' horse line would be ideal) and keep her on the line. Let her have some freedom and then call her back, reeling her back in so to speak.

An incentive would be a reward of warm sausage, baked liver, ham etc - something very desirable.

She's probably being a teenager. Marlon went through a phase like that between about 9 - 13 months old and everything he learned he unlearned!

My only complaint about Cavaliers is their general inability to be trained not to run away when off lead. I have one I can let off, but she is super lazy. The other two...unless we are in the woods somewhere, there's NO CHANCE. Even if they were trained well on recall, i would NEVER let them off lead where there were other people, dogs, or cars. NEVER.

Yea the horse rope is GREAT my mum uses them when she was training our pointers and labs for upland bird hunting.

I would try also to get her used to being outside where there is no fence. Fences teach them where they can go and are forced to stop. Amanda was a bit like that when she came to me, but I did all my training in the front yard so that I could teach her about streets. Cavs really have NO street smarts. By being outside without a fence she learned that if she stayed close to me she could do alot more and go more places. I would try your training in the front yard so that you can teach your pup that the street is bad.

Hope that helps.

Your pup has hit that lovely, boundary pushing adolescence we all know and love! We also went from a great recall to no recall with Maddie around that age. We used a long line (30ft) - a friend managed to find a nice light one with a small clip so that it wasn't too heavy from her collar. We also worked on finding a toy that she would focus on. For her it was a golf ball. Luckily she didn't ever want to catch it (I dread to think what that would do to her teeth ) but would chase after it and bring it back. We usually took 3 balls out with us, so when she'd got one we had others to tempt her back with. Eventually we graduated onto a chukka-ball, which is 2 golf ball size tennis balls (if that makes sense?) on a bungee rope. She loves this toy so much that it doesn't matter where we are - if the toy is there she stays completely focussed. :rah:

It took us a long time to get to the point where we trust her off lead (and I never would around cars/ roads even now), probably 9 - 12 months of long line training, but it was completely worth it.

The other thing I did was whistle train the re-call, so that she didn't react to the tone of voice (happy, panicked, anxious, angry, irritated etc.) but to the command. That has worked fairly well with her, but brilliantly with Pippin. And we used plenty of treats as rewards, usually saving something really good for when we're out and about that she doesn't get any other time.

Also, having got an ok recall, we don't take it for granted. She's 4 yrs old now, and still has the potential to have selective deafness so I reinforce the recall, going back to some basic training, just to remind her that I am a fun person to be with! Much more fun than all those smells, squirrels, rabbits etc.

Mindy ran off once when she was just about 10 months old. She was chasing something in the bush. Like some of the others I thought I'd never see her again. It took me nine years to get the nerve to let her off leash again. I've called her back from chasing a rabbit and she came - I was impressed. I can't forsee letting Max off leash for quite some time. We have lots of things here for him to smell and hunt. Right now he doesn't have a good recall in the back yard so we have a ways to go.

Recall is one of the harder things to train in part because it really requires constant practice and people tend to forget this and only expect the dog to come when called every now and then. Daily practice helps! Not just when you are on a walk. I'd suggest using either a long lead or an extensa lead until you KNOW she is reliable on recall -- her life may depend on it! Carry a pocket full of treats and regularly call her and treat and praise when she retuens. Never ever scold or punish for not returning or if you have to go get her -- as that only has to happen a few times for her to be trained to avoid returning to you as you are unpredictable in behaviour and sometimes reward, sometimes punish (this is a key mistake many people make!). Also use opportunities every day to call her and treat, call her and treat -- at mealtimes, while watching TV, out in the garden etc.

In the training sites pinned at the top of the training section there is loads of advice at each site on training recall.

Also see:

http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/dr-dunbar-answers-top-faqs

and

http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/stay-come-amp-follow

The other thing I do with mine is to put their leads on a few times during the walk, then let them off again. This way they have learnt that the lead doesn't mean the end of the walk and the end of their fun, so if they see it in my hand they aren't reluctant to come to me. And of course, they get rewarded when they come. We made lots of mistakes with Maddie's recall when she was young, and basically had to re-train from scratch, as well as eradicating bad habits. One of the many mistakes was to try and phase out the food rewards too soon and too quickly. But we live and learn, and we didn't make the same mistakes with Pippin. Different ones, but not the same.

I have tried everything with Rosie. As soon as I take the lead of she is gone. She is very food orientated but on a walk it doesn’t matter even if I would get a whole chicken out of my coat pocket she doesn’t care. At home the garden and in obedience class she is perfect. I tried her on a 30ft training lead, she is perfect on that, listens and stops straight away and comes back to me. She knows she is on the lead. About 40 min from where we live is a lovely place where I can let her of the lead as everything is enclosed. That’s the only place I let her of the lead, after loosing her for two hours before I won’t risk it anywhere else.

I would love to be able to let Sally off the lead more often but I just don't like to risk it. I'm just too scared she'll take off and go under a car or towards a nasty dog. I tend to stick to longer walks on the lead at a fast pace. It's ashame because I know she loves to run but I would never forgive myself if anything happened to her :luv:. There is only one field a few miles from here where we let her off lead for a good run and thats only when my OH and I both go. I'd love to play fetch with a ball with both Sally and Lois in our garden but I've tried and tried and they dont seem to get the hang of it. What is the best way to teach fetch? This would be good exercise

Well neither Mindy or Zeus (our retriever)ever liked to play ball so I set out to teach Max and it seems to be working. :xfngr: First of all, the ball itself is important. Max had absolutely no interest in the mini tennis balls. I bought a really flimsy rubber ball with a big squeaker and got him interested by squeaking. I rolled it a little bit and when he brought it back I gave him a treat. It didn't take too long with the treats and he realized that it was a fun game on it's own. I then progressed to tossing the ball and letting him chase it. On the advice of Mindy's agility instructor he only gets the ball when we are playing together. Lately I've got a little red rubber ball made of kong like material so he can chew on it as well. We play ball in the house so far because it's been too cold to be outside for the most part. I do have to add that last weekend when we had nice weather I tried to play ball outside and he was too busy running around the yard to pay any attention to the ball.

Mindy will NOT play ball (she's a princess you know). She will however go and find the ball for Max if he looses sight of it and nose it for him. (She used to get a treat when he brought back the ball too - so it was in her own best interest). I think she might have played when she was younger but our Retriever was pretty excitable and she probably felt that she'd stay out of his path and let him take the ball (he'd only take it - never return it). Hope that might work for you.

Oliver likes hunting and occasionally disappears after a squirrel or rabbit - but never stays away very long. A piece of advice which made a great difference to his coming back was given me by an experienced trainer. When your dog disappears, your instinct is to stay still and keep calling, so that the dog can find you again. But from the dog's point of view, this can in fact encourage them to stay away longer - 'I can still hear her, so she's not far away, I'm not going to get lost, so I'll just chase this rabbit for a bit longer.' The advice was to call once, loudly and firmly, and start walking slowly away; dog then thinks; 'Uh-oh, she seems to have gone away and left me, I'd better go and find her.' It works very well with Oliver!

Teenage in most breeds means they behave as if they've never learnt anything in their lives - but also we underestimate the temptations of the great outdoors. Doing a good recall in class or at home doesn't prepare dogs for doing the same in the midst of temptation - all those sights, smells, things to investigate, other dogs. They need to relearn on a long line, with plenty of praise and super treats to make coming to you more fun than anything else in the park. Then they'll be ready to go off-lead.

Kate, Oliver and Aled

thanks all of you for the advice, its great to hear im not the only one with thiis problem. Ive taken her out since with treats and she was brilliant and didnt run away once, i kept calling and treating her and she really responded and came back every time. I am going to continue with recall training and keept reminding her like at tv time and dinner time like was said before. Im really greatful for all the advice

I know how you feel! My grans cavalier goes off like a shot anytime she's off the lead or even see's an open door. It's made me terrified to let my own dog off the lead in case she won't come back!