Emergency recall

A single word kept only for danger — your dog turns and runs to you without stopping to think.

🐾🐾🐾🐾 · ~21 days · 5 min/session

Learn first: Come

Step-by-step

1. Pick a word for emergencies only

   Choose a signal your dog has never heard — two short blasts on a whistle, or a word like “Alarm”. Don’t use “Come”: it already carries the whole history of your walks, good and bad. Decide on the reward too — something your dog gets for this signal and never otherwise.

   💡 A whistle sounds the same whether you’re calm or your breath has stopped with fear. Your voice doesn’t.

2. Charge the signal at home

   Your dog is doing nothing special in the room. Give the signal once and immediately start feeding piece after piece for ten seconds. You’re not asking for any behaviour yet — first the word has to mean “party”. Five or six reps a day, at random moments, for a whole week.

3. Add the run towards you

   Give the signal when your dog is three or four metres away and mildly busy, then step backwards a few paces — moving away pulls them after you. Feed for ten seconds while you gently hold the collar, and only then say “Free”. Finishing with a hand on the collar is what makes the recall safe in a real situation.

   💡 Touch the collar gently and always alongside food, before the treat rather than after — the contact never surprises them, and they don’t learn to eat and duck away.

4. Go outside on a long line

   Clip on a 10-metre training line and work where the distractions are mild — a dog in the distance, an interesting smell, children at the far end of the field. Do at most one emergency recall per walk so the signal stays rare and strong. If your dog doesn’t respond, don’t repeat it — move closer and make the next rep easier.

5. Guard the word like gold

   The rules are simple: never to end a park visit, never for a bath or a nail trim, never twice in a row and never without the jackpot in your pocket. No reward on you, no signal. Real use is a handful of times a year — everything else is a paid practice rep.

6. Maintain it and keep a plan B

   Refresh the signal once a week for the rest of your dog’s life — one call, one jackpot. If they ever don’t respond, don’t call again: crouch, turn and run the other way to trigger the instinct to follow you. Near game, roads or cats the long line stays on until the signal has been proven hundreds of times.

   💡 Mark the reps in your calendar. A signal that hasn’t been refreshed for months isn’t an emergency plan, it’s a hope.

Common mistakes

• Using the emergency signal for everyday things — it wears out exactly like “Come” and goes silent just when you need it.
• An ordinary treat after the signal — one dry biscuit is not a jackpot, and your dog does the maths the very first time.
• Training straight away around strong distractions — one failure weighs as much as ten successes.
• Giving the signal in a frightened or angry voice — your dog hears the tone, not the word, and slows down instead of running.

Problems & solutions

My dog took off after a cat and simply didn’t hear a thing.

In full chase a dog really is deaf — that’s why you train at the moment they notice but haven’t launched. Work under that threshold on a long line and give the signal at the first turn of the head. Where there are cats and game, the line stays on.

At home my dog responds instantly, outside they just lift their head.

Outdoors the signal is learned almost from scratch. Go back to five metres on the long line, raise the value of the reward and pay with ten seconds of feeding, not one treat. Only add distractions after ten clean reps.

I used the signal twice to get my dog out of the park and now it doesn’t work.

You’ve spent the word. Stop using it, pick a new sound and charge it at home for two weeks before taking it outside. For going home, build a separate cue that also ends with a treat and sometimes with five more minutes of play.

Reward ideas

A jackpot only, and only for this signal: a whole slice of ham, pâté squeezed from a tube, or ten seconds of boiled meat fed piece by piece. A dog that gets the same thing in the kitchen won’t run flat out.