I read this post the other day and was quite interested in the advice from Jen and Mary. Morgan has had walks off the lead ever since he was 14 weeks (5 minutes to start with and now he gets 1/2 hour) and he has always been good at coming back...........except when there's another dog about. If we meet another dog he always follows them. I let him play for a minute but I always end up having to go get him and put him on lead till the coast is clear. It gets a bit wearing so I decided to try walking off.
It worked!! I walked off but was still in sight and he only let me go about 50 metres before he realised I was going and followed.
He got a bit of a fright later in the walk though. We came to a river with a bridge over it. The normal routine is for me to cross the bridge to get to the other side and he insists on going straight through the river
. Today I was on my way down the bank at the other side of the river but Morgan went back up to the top of the bridgeand when I wasn't there, he went tearing off in the direction we had come from
- he thought I had left him
. It took a bit of shouting and whistling to get hime to realise I was still there. I could actually see the relief on his face
. He was stuck to me like glue for the rest of the walk! He definately wants to be one of the pack!
Thanks Mary and Jen, it's great to be able to pick up tips from people who've actually tried and tested the theory