Hi everyone we have a 4 month old whippet who after some initial dominance problems has settled into a fantastic little dog who we couldn't be happier with except for his recall.When indoors or in the garden its very nearly 100% as are sit,stay,give paw and down but in the park its almost non existant add another dog to the equation and it is non existant so he's back on his lead again,we use lots of treats if he does come to us and try and look as exciteing as possible when calling him.After reading another post we've bought a 9 metre lunge lead and are hoping we can call him and reinforce it with a little tug what we find really strange is that we've hardly done any work on "down" but he throws himself to the ground as soon as we shout it even with other dogs around so at least we dont upset other owners with our out of control dog.We really would appreciate some help on this we've tried so hard to improve his recall but if I'm honest it hasn't improved outdoors since the day we first took him out.

Thanks in advance.
Steve

"we find really strange is that we've hardly done any work on "down" but he throws himself to the ground as soon as we shout it even with other dogs around so at least we dont upset other owners with our out of control dog"

It could be he is being submissive to you. How does he lie down? Straight or on his side?

Helen

No he's anything but a submissive dog he's very outgoing, when he goes down he goes down on his belly head held high waiting for the next command he will do it even when 50 or more metres away from us and usually comes to us from a down position its just we dont want to get him into a routine of only coming to us from a down position or shouldn't we worry about that.

Cheers
Steve

Hi Steve, our dog does the same thing when he sees another dog and I happily exploited it for control! I wouldnt worry about it and keep doing the good work on recall. Your timing on the long lead is spot on as your whippet will get the wanderlust at 6 months, and you are preventing him from rewarding himself with freetime/not coming back when called, which could create a lot of problems with recall in future. Good on you and if only I had been that sensible! :)