I adopted a 1 year old rescue dog 1yr ago a porcelaine mix, she has taking to general traing very well, sit, paw, off etc etc on the lead she is getting far better with myself and will sit at road junctions with a click. Now off the lead in unfamiliar areas 100% fine will come back, gets on fine with other dogs, now if we are walking in an area she knows and she gets a sent of say a fox ....gone( cant see or hear her) will not come back and i often have to leave to go home, she always returns within 10-15 mins. At this point should I reward the good behavior for retuning or tell her off for legging it? she is a natural hunter by breed, any help would be much appreciated
07-16-2012, 09:06 PM
McMegan
My personal feelings on off-leash walking aside, in answer to your question, it would be best to neither reward or punish this behavior. If you punish her when she returns to you, she will think she is being punished for returning. Dogs don't rationalize and she will not understand that she is being punished for something that already happened, in the past. You will then have an even bigger problem on your hands as she becomes reluctant to return to you at all, for fear of punishment. Likewise, I would not reward her returning on her own time (other than neutrally acknowledging her return). Rather, approach this as a training exercise and help her learn the discipline to consistently obey certain offleash commands such as "leave it" and the recall/come-when-called and praise/treat LAVISHLY when she returns to you on YOUR terms. You want her to think, "Yeah, chasing that fox is fun and all, but you know what? Returning to this guy is even better because I LOVE hot dogs/squeaky toy/chase game/whatever!" A command such as "leave it" can be built up to a level that you can actually call her away from chasing something (yes, even hunting dogs can do this). Paul Owens has a good description in his book and I'm sure there are others, as well. Hope this helps!
