Normal pup stuff and it's likely to get a lot worse at times in the next year or so before it improves as he discovers more wonderful scents and things to see. You have to focus on the fact that he's just growing up and discovering the world he's not being naughty and I promise that he's not a bad puppy for doing the things he's doing at the moment
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Agree that you need to focus more on explaining to him what you do want and 'paying' him for that so he knows it's worth his while - would you feel motivated to 'work' for free?. Good recall is vital for happy walks and takes a lot of hard work - my dogs are 3 and 5 now and I still practice good recall opportunities every walk - even though they are 99% (I've accepted it's never going to be 100%
).
As has been said above, I watch for moments when I know, without fail, that they will come and I recall then and reward them with a treat - several times a walk. Then when I do need them back at other times when there are distractions, I know their recall is reliable. They both turn on a six pence from anywhere now when I whistle them and I wouldn't have it any other way and in fact, they love it as a game too. But it has taken MONTHS of hard work and frustration to get this - one of my dogs is a rescue (she was 2 when I got her) and she has a very high hunt drive, she can't ignore scents and would just run off blindly every time she got a whiff of something when I first got her. I'd loose her for up to 40mins every walk which as you can imagine, is horrendous
. So you can see that potentially, if the work isn't put into a puppy of a hunting breed then you can get real problems when they're older. Lots of positive work for the next year or so will pay off in barrel loads later on, but you have to keep your cool - don't get cross when it doesn't go right, work out why he didn't come back that time and try and avoid a situation like that for a while until you get lots more good practice recalls in with lots of rewards. The more times he comes back and is rewarded the more likely he is to be reliable.
You could consider getting a whistle as a distracted dog is more likely to hear that than a voice - practice recalling him with it in your garden. Choose your command and stick to it (I give 3 pips for recall), then wait until he's about to come to you, blow 3 pips with your arms out to encourage him and give him a treat and loads of praise - it wont take long for him to work out what the pips mean then you can start using the whistle on walks too and practice in the same way I've described above
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I hope that helps, it's incredibly rewarding when you start to see your dog maturing and becoming reliable and you know that it's down to all the positive hard work you've put in. It's very hard not to get frustrated and humanise how dogs behave, but once you accept that they're not being naughty, they're just learning and doing what they've been bred to do for 100's of years and you just need to manage that and teach them when it's ok to go off sniffing etc then you'll have a great dog. Never show frustration or that you are cross when he does come back as in his mind, he will think that you are cross because he came back to you which won't encourage him to think coming back to you is a good thing - he won't associate your frustration with the fact that he didn't come back to you when called.
With the toilet training, it is confusing if they're allowed to go in the house on newspaper sometimes and agree leaving the back door open will be confusing the boundary of where he can and can't go - you've had some great tips above on that one
Lots of luck, you will get there! (chocolate and wine really help I find
)
