A minute-long sit, with me a field away

What you’re watching

I take him to the far end of the field and send him back to his owner across a long stretch of open ground. He comes the whole way at speed, past everything a dry summer field has to offer a young gundog.

Then comes the harder part. He sits, and stays sat, while I walk the whole distance back to him. That’s nearly a minute of doing nothing while the most interesting person in the field gets slowly closer.

The bit owners underestimate

People talk about recall as if it’s one thing. In practice the coming back is the easy part. It’s what happens either side of it that goes wrong.

A dog that comes back and then shoots straight off again hasn’t really come back at all. Getting him to wait once he’s with you is what makes the recall something you can rely on.

Distance is the other half. Plenty of dogs come back beautifully from ten feet and ignore you completely from sixty yards. You add ground a bit at a time. The wait has to be practised with someone walking towards the dog, which he finds much harder than someone walking away.

Where this sits in the training

This wasn’t our first session together and it won’t be the last. A recall like this is built up over weeks, and the owner does most of the practice between my visits.

Adolescence is when most owners lose their dog’s recall, and it’s also a good time to build it properly. If your dog has started ignoring you in open spaces, that’s very common, and it can be fixed.