My 2 year old retriever used to have excellent recall and never wandered far from me. Just recently she has been disappearing off whilst out walking in the new forest, and coming back to me when she feels good and ready which feels like about 5 minutes, but i don't know if that is what it is in real time. Her recall is excellent in other situations so it is just a case of don't want to rather than not knowing what to do. She always gets a tasty treat if she returns when i call or whistle, and when she does come back she returns at break neck speed. I think her behaviour started when i was looking after some terriers, who showed her how fun it was chasing bunies in the undergrowth. grr! Then we got murphy the springer, and once he went off lead it was like the terrible two some. THe only difference is that when he disappears 9 times out of 10 the whistle brings him back immediately, but ellie takes her time. I'm not sure where to go from here. I don't really want to regress to keeping her on lead, but food doesn't seem to keep her with me and toys aren't as exciting as running around. Has anyone successfully retrained their dog not to disappear on a regualr basis or am i simply going to have to keep her on lead for every walk?

Maybe she thinks the treat is  because she has been missing for so long and not because she's just arrived back :d

Food is obviously not as much fun as hunting.    Five minutes is not very long to have to wait for a dog.    I would not whistle her until you are sure she is going to come back as she is just learning to ignore it.   Let her have her fun and then whistle her and send her off in a different direction.   This way she will learn that the whistle does not mean the end of hunting but it will put the hunting behaviour under your control.

Wendy

I would whistle once and then carry on walking, leaving her to find me.  She might not be so confident going off when she realises you won't hang around waiting for her.  If you call or whistle again, it will just reassure her that you are still there and send the message that it's ok to carry on hunting, despite having warned her that you are moving on by your initial call.

The first few times, make it easy for her to succeed by walking slowly and make sure she sees you when she comes pelting out of the bushes in a panic.