Ben is taking the micky with his recall....

[Ben's mum]

Ok I'll admit it I seem to have been outsmarted by Ben - and not sure how to stop him 

Ben does a superb whistle recall, but a few weeks ago he started doing 'mock' runs.  He suddenly took off as if he had seen something to chase, I whistled and he turned straight round and came back.  I praised and rewarded etc, then about half an hour later he did the same again.  I still hadn't caught on, so whistled him back, and rewarded etc.  The next day he did it again a couple of times, he just takes off at top speed and goes well beyond the distance he normally goes away from us.  Again perfect recall to the whistle. I started to notice that each time he did it he looked up at me before he ran off, and he also was running in a sort of an arc away from me not a straight line.  So that I didn't end up constantly whistling and rewarding I tried to find another way to get him back without using the whistle. so I started playing with Harry and it worked, as he comes running back to see what I am doing and I can just praise him for coming back etc and reward with a small treat.

Yesterday he stepped it up a gear and I am stumped  He ran off quickly, I turned to Harry to start playing tuggy and Ben jumped over a wall in the field, which he never does.  I panicked and whistled as I don't like not being able to see him, and of course he came straight back and got lots of yummy treats.   A little while later he ran behind a line of trees, so while he wasn't very far away he was out of sight - so I whistled again.  Today he did the wall trick 3 times 

On one hand I am confident he will always come back, that is not a worry, and it reinforces his recall, but I don't want to have spend the whole time whistling and rewarding him, I want to just use the whistle when I want to - not when he wants me to 
Any ideas please 

[LynneB]

What a clever boy

[Karma]

We had a similar experience when Honey got used to horses.  She'd suddenly become scared of them, and would charge up to them barking, so we worked hard on recall and proofed it to the point we could recall her from horses, while also introducing her to calm horses so that they were less scary and distracting.
After a while she started charging up to horses, but looking back at us waiting for the recall...    We just didn't recall her (assuming she was still in sight and we could see that the horse wasn't at all stressed by a confused dog landing at its feet!!! Obviously if the horse was not in clear sight, or there were any indications it wasn't safe to just let her go, we'd still recall, but it broke the habit enough that she'll now happily walk within 1 metre of a horse without even registering it's there!!! 

[Sheryl]

When we were training Kali, she would run through her whole repertoire just to get to the treat.  The APDT said she was this.......http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

[Sarah.H]

I would say you need to set him up somewhere relatively safe so you can ignore it  . Does he know 'this way'? We always shout it out to the dogs when we change direction or take a particular track, they quickly learn what it means and alter their course to follow, it is handy in situations you want them to change direction but not actually recall back.

[Sarah.H]

When we were training Kali, she would run rou the whole repertoire just to get to the treat.  The APDT said she was this.......http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

Is this the same as Millie asking to go out into the garden to run straight back in for a treat? 

[Ben's mum]

When we were training Kali, she would run through her whole repertoire just to get to the treat.  The APDT said she was this.......http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

This is really interesting, but I am not entirely sure who has been 'conditioned' me or Ben