pagep
Member
I had a pretty scary experience with my cavalier Waldo the other day. We have him about 4 months now, and recall training has been going pretty good -very obedient, always comes back to us when we call. I only ever let him off leash in a fairly remote area of our local park, or on his morning walks, we go up to an enclosed football field where he loves to play fetch.
He caught sight of some swallows swooping low over the ground and that was it, he was gone! No amount of calling was bringing him back and he was getting further and further away and closer to the gate where we entered the field. Luckily the bird he was chasing doubled back and I eventually got him to come over, but I got such a fright. I stayed as calm as I could, didn't chase after him and didn't scold him when he came back.
Like I said, recall training has been pretty good and I would never, ever let him off the lead anywhere around traffic because I know cavaliers don't have the best road sense, but now I am thinking should I let him off at all or have I just a lot more to do on the recall training?
My gut feeling is that no amount of recall training will help once that primal instinct to chase/hunt kicks in and I am probably re-inforcing it with our games of fetch! Anyone else have similar experiences with their cavaliers or have tips on getting recall to work every time, even in the face of major distractions.
He caught sight of some swallows swooping low over the ground and that was it, he was gone! No amount of calling was bringing him back and he was getting further and further away and closer to the gate where we entered the field. Luckily the bird he was chasing doubled back and I eventually got him to come over, but I got such a fright. I stayed as calm as I could, didn't chase after him and didn't scold him when he came back.
Like I said, recall training has been pretty good and I would never, ever let him off the lead anywhere around traffic because I know cavaliers don't have the best road sense, but now I am thinking should I let him off at all or have I just a lot more to do on the recall training?
My gut feeling is that no amount of recall training will help once that primal instinct to chase/hunt kicks in and I am probably re-inforcing it with our games of fetch! Anyone else have similar experiences with their cavaliers or have tips on getting recall to work every time, even in the face of major distractions.