Thursday afternoon a young man of 14 or so was riding his 4-wheeler in the field next to us. He zoomed down our fence line and Buddy took off chasing him, instead of continuing on around the field, the kid turned around and raced back down our fence line with Buddy running as fast as he could go. My husband had just come in from the store and our gate was still open, Buddy stopped for all of 2 seconds and blew through the gate and chased the kid part way down the road with me yelling at him to come. Thank God all the the horrible things that could of happened, didn’t and boy and dog were fine. The next afternoon the kid came back, only this time I had the gate closed and Buddy was wearing his e-collar. Buddy was sitting with me on the porch and he did get up to go toward the fence, but stopped as soon as I told him no and came back to me and laid down. The boy was racing along the fence calling the dog trying to get him to chase him and Buddy stayed right by me without my having to correct him at all.

It’s clear to me that I still have a lot of work to do on his recall but am at a loss of what to do. Most of the time the dog will mind without my having to deliver any type of correction. Finding his level of distractions is proving difficult, this is only the 2nd thing that I have seen where he has ignored my command.

Regards,
Peggy

It sounds like your dog is collar wise. I think it's hard to keep them from this but this is my guess. Also sounds like not enough obedience training or not consistent maintenence with training. I understand the distraction issue but you have to continue training with tougher distractions as he obeys with easier ones.

In addition to being collar wise, in the first instance you called him while he was in high drive. In the second, you called him before he was in drive. A part of this is a handler error (Believe me, I make them enough to recognize them). You called him while he was in high drive with no way of correcting him and without having him distraction proofed enough to be able to break the drive. I would have done the exact same thing, with the exact same results. "Honey, we're gonna need to get a new dog."

I know you have 8 weeks to 8 mos, and I'm sure you've seen the section on training "come" using leash corrections and the long line. I'd work on that, stimulate drive and get him reliable with come while the object of his desire is within sight, and tempting him. The correction for disobeying should be more...important...than the reward for disobeying, and the reward for obeying should be better than the reward for disobeying. But work your way up to a high level of distraction. Start slow, work up. Set him up to succeed. Take your time, etc.

I know that my dogs sits and downs are much more reliable than his recall. If you find yourself in a situation like the first one again (an emergency), try to issue the command that he is most reliable with, then go into an obedience routine as you approach him. Clip your words as you would when you want him to move quickly and sharply, and praise him. Do all this while approaching to get a hand on his collar. "Sit!! goooood. Down!! gooooood! Steh!! GOOD! Down!! Goooooood!" *grab, reward heavily*

Just some ideas.

Eric, I know Buddy is collar wise to the prong but don't think he has figured out the e-collar. I continue to rotate his collars several times a day and he can go several days without my having to stem him at all. I guess my problem is finding the triggers that gets him that distracted in order to work through them.
The 4-wheeler was a complete surprise, never saw this dog run so fast. My fault for not getting to the gate before he did, it was the first time since he was four months old that he ever went out the gate on his own.

David - your right, it was handler error. By the time I made it to the road Buddy had stopped chasing the kid and was standing there. He came right to me when I called him.

The kid has come back a couple of times today and each time I was outside with Buddy. I could see Buddy was getting excited but he just looked at me and stayed right by me. I was prepared in case Buddy took off after him but the darn dog wasn't going to give me that opportunity.