OK...I guess some of you will shout and be scathing as I KNOW I reacted wrongly at times, but when your 8 month old GSP is headed at warp factor 10 for a 'main road,' it is very difficult not to panic...

Anyway, the sad story unfolds as follows.....I parked up on a single track lane which is off a semi-suburban B road.  Off the  lane is a footpath to the woods.  Have parked here and walked here numerous times before, without incident.  Yesterday, we parked up and walked on the lead to the footpath.....a distance of about 80 yards... I made my dog sit and released him, pointing into the woods.  Immediately, he did a 180 degree U turn and legged it back onto the road where there was a freshly squidged bunny still screaming in death throes. :-(  (I hadn't heard anything - screeching of brakes, screaming of bunny or owt, but he obviously had smelt or heard it!)  He picked up his trophy and headed back in my vague direction....not to me....but in my general vicinity.  Stupidly, I made a grab for him and he did another 180 back to the road.  Whilst my whistle, recall and stop shouts were ignored by him, they did at least alert a wonderful guy who was jogging along the roadside.  He saw my dog running towards the road and stepped into it, holding up all the traffic and thereby avoided a sure accident. I don't know who he is as he disappeared, but I owe him big time. 

QUESTION:  Puppy is 8 months old. I thought (ha ha!) I had him reasonably well trained for most situations for his age.  He won't chase/run into a rabbit or pheasant;  admittedly, he doesn't always drop when commanded, but will stop/freeze or sit in most situations - at the moment, I've been accepting this variation.  Given what's happened, how can I best retrieve the situation?
I've had him back on the long line, but he is a smart cookie and knows the difference between being loose and being on a line.  How can I best recreate such a tempting situation for him in training where I have control over all the factors and can play them to my favour?

Help!  Please.....you have no idea how it feels to see your beloved dog headed for a road and sure death.  I do not want this to happen again.   Nor do I want the resultant hangover after downing such a quantity of chateauneuf du pape to quell the angst and nerves.  :-(

I think you've learnt the lesson - luckily nobody (canine or human) payed the ulitmate price.  If it's any help, it can happen to anyone - my Dad had owned dogs for 60 years when his Springer ran into the road to get to his mate who was on the other side of the road - and got hit by a milk tanker!!

I'd work on the 'down' command - it's often easier to just get the dog to go down and stay down, than try and steer it back towards you........  It might also be worth considering a long line, or lunge line for the time being, your dog is entering adolescence, and these out of brain moments are going to become a little more frequent :(

Training, training, and yet more training!

"Puppy is 8 months old. I thought (ha ha!) I had him reasonably well trained for most situations for his age".

He is now becoming a Kevin and pulling at the apron strings, he is an HPR and this is exactly the behaviour I would expect from this type of dog at this age and why I always emphasise that recall training has to be relentless from day 1 and continued daily until 2 at least until the dog is conditioned to come back from anything, any time, anywhere.

Karen Pryor makes an interesting point re one of her colleagues who reckons a recall is a 20 step exercise and that if you have only trained up to a level 6 recall it is not good expecting  a level 15 recall; by that I mean you must train and proof against everything in incremental steps so that you are confident that the dog will return in exactly the situation you mention.

So you will have to go back a bit and train for this, and be honest re the level of recall your dog is at and then progress to training for coming away from dogs, people, food, fights etc etc etc.  Until this stage is reached try to avoid situations like this by managing the environment or putting the dog on the lead.

My breed is an HPR and I have to say I have never used a long line myself but it can be helpful for some owners if used correctly if only for developing timing and increasing confidence so that you can concentrate on the training aspect without worrying if your dog is going to bog off.

HTH

If you use the long line method, it may be helpful to move onto just letting the dog trail the line and over a period of time, cutting the line shorter and shorter so that in the end he has no long line on him.

I have used the Leave It training to good effect - done with plenty of rewards and starting from basics (ie leave food in the hand, when dog pulls head back as he knows he cannot get to the hand, reward with food from the other hand, and carried on to articles, 2 toys and eventually moving objects). Perhaps you would find this useful if you incorportated dead objects. I find that with the Leave, the dog has  a "cut off" where he knows the word means he will not get what he wants so returns to the owner for the reward. But the reward does have to be very high value and not just a small piece of biscuit.

Lindsay
X

Jan, are you a member of the GSP Club? They run training classes on a once a month basis. You will meet people whom own the breed and have many years of experience behind them. You will also meet other people with young dogs whom are in the same boat as yourself. Your dog has a good nose on him, and you need to control it.

Thanks for comments/suggestions/ideas one and all....much appreciated.  Back to drawing board and I will look into GSP club.

Cheers