# Impossible to recall.... Bird in sight....



## Mako (Aug 12, 2019)

My female 4yo has been great. Trained hard for upland birds, ducks, and squirrels, and the kids can't live without her.
Trained her for a full year.

She has been great, and my family has had so much fun with her.

Over the past 10 days, we camped remotely on some lakes and rivers. Just family time, canoeing and fishing. 

Off leash she always has perfect recall.... until this trip. 

One look at a duck, and she literally will swim after it forever. Complete tunnel vision. Zero recall.

After an hour, on the first day, I had to canoe out in the middle of a lake, 1/2 mile out and practically lasso her neck to retrieve her. This happened each day I allowed off leash swimming.

It only happened when a bird was in sight, and in the water.

We hunt ducks, dove, quail, rabbits, squirrels, etc, and her recall skills have disappeared. 

Any thoughts?


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## texasred (Jan 29, 2012)

Keeping a good recall, takes on going training. 
Especially when you add that kind of distraction.
Hunting season is right around the corner, you don't have any time to spare.


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## tegee26 (Apr 25, 2018)

Mako said:


> My female 4yo has been great. Trained hard for upland birds, ducks, and squirrels, and the kids can't live without her.
> Trained her for a full year.
> 
> She has been great, and my family has had so much fun with her.
> ...




My 2-year old male V does the same exact thing when chasing deer off our property or geese in our two ponds. Especially geese, he will literally swim forever until they fly away; which can be dangerous with regard to tiring out, etc.

We have a large property (160-acres) and have him on e-collar. He's been professionally trained onsite since 9-months old. And, for us, the e-collar has been a game changer. We started out with the Ecollar Technologies collar and great luck with that model; very easy to use and train. But we have since switched to the Garmin Alpha TT; which has 4-mile GPS built into the device. Having GPS has been a very useful feature and I can track him on the handheld unit, etc.

Anyway, when it comes to recall it all boils down to consistency and constantly working with your V. I use every day as a training session. This breed is born to work and with both of our V's I am constantly in training mode. I remember when we were in our puppy and advanced classes, the instructor always pounded into us he critically important recall is for a myriad of reason.....fwiw.

Best of luck with working on recall.


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## gingerling (Jun 20, 2015)

Mako, yours is an example of pure instinct x great training, right? V's are superb bird dogs naturally, and you've spent quality time correctly polishing and honing this ability. And, being as preternaturally (I just love that adjective for them!) intelligent, she's generalizing your excellent training onto this new water borne situation. The task is to modify this w/o it affecting all your other birding training. It's her losing her mind in the water you need to address, the water...not the instict to flush the bird.

I'm with TeGee here, this is one for the E collar, train recall command to that, then let her in the H2O and recall, w/ the collar. If she doesn't respond, leave her be, eventually they swim back, and redouble your efforts at retraining to the collar.


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## texasred (Jan 29, 2012)

Sorry, I was running short on time. And didn't give a full explanation. I agree with both, of the above post. Here always means Here. Whoa always means Whoa. Both of those commands are easy the overlap training with the e-collar. 
It doesn't matter, if you're out hunting. Or your dog decides to chase the neighbor's cat. Here is still here. That's what I meant by ongoing training.


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## Mako (Aug 12, 2019)

I forgot to mention about our last pheasant hunt....

Dog held point, I flushed the bird, and missed my shot,(.410) dog goes full chase mode... after a full minute sprint, this dog leaps into the air, and retrieves a live, squawking rooster. Wish I had a video.


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## Mako (Aug 12, 2019)

Thanks for the replies. Time for a new collar, and start retraining.


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## harrigab (Aug 21, 2011)

e-collars are banned here in England, Ruby has great recall 99.9% of the time, unless she see's a hare, at 8 year old I doubt very much there's much I can do about it now.


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## texasred (Jan 29, 2012)

harrigab said:


> e-collars are banned here in England, Ruby has great recall 99.9% of the time, unless she see's a hare, at 8 year old I doubt very much there's much I can do about it now.


With them being banned, 99.9 is a excellent number.

I have to admit, I've let my younger dogs give chase on jack rabbits.
I can call them back, when they get some distance from me.
The reason I do it. I've never seen one be a able to catch one.
I let the jack rabbits teach them the lesson, if possible. 
Cottontails are a different story.
Deer, and coyotes are off limit to chasing. 
Not saying they haven't tried it.


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## lyra (Nov 2, 2012)

harrigab said:


> e-collars are banned here in England.



That isn't currently true. They were made illegal in Wales in 2010. The English government announced in August 2018 that they were going to make them illegal but then dropped it after consultation. The same is true in Scotland where they are still legal.


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## texasred (Jan 29, 2012)

Mako said:


> Thanks for the replies. Time for a new collar, and start retraining.


Overlapping the ecollar training, can be a little daunting the first few times. If you haven't done it before, you need a lot of correct information. YouTube videos have just as many bad ones, as good ones.
After 10 years, and a lot of dogs. 
I can now collar condition recall, in about 10 minutes. While still keeping the dog happy. 
A couple more 10 minute sessions, and they are ready for the field off the lead.


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