Emergency Recalls and Treat Party

While I'm stilling thinking about the most awesome puppy class ever, I thought I should mention recalls.  This class effectively trains two types of recall.  The traditional, puppy, come!  Puppy turns to come, click treat, the usual.  What this class also discussed, and what I think too few classes build in, is an emergency recall.

Great, you want your dog to come every time, and you've been working on it, but what do you do in a pannick?  You through a treat party.  

A treat party is a *major* jackpot.  I'm used to giving *major* jackpots when one of my dogs comes off a particularly interesting distraction (this is why I can now call Ioda off running cats).  

What is a different about a treat party, is that the dog knows she's going to get a *major* jackpot. It works like this: You yell "Treat party!" and start dropping wonderful, delicious treats on the floor, one at a time, while playing with your dog and telling her she's the best dog ever.  You give her about 2 minutes of full on puppy bliss.  Start doing this around distractions, enough that she knows that anywhere she ever goes, treat party means treat party.  

Now you have an emergency recall, "Treat party".  Use it carefully and use it wisely and always make sure that treat party = treat party.  Like you've taught your dog that click = treat, "treat party" = treat party.