00:11S1
On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to the Seeing Eye Dogs Show with me, your host, Harriet Moffatt. I've got two guests for you today. The first is puppy development trainer Steph Shore talking about recall. We're going to be talking about how to train and maintain a solid recall, including around distractions. Recall is an important skill for any dog handler for the safety and confidence of you and your dog, whether that's in the house, out in the garden, or in a public off lead place. So I hope you find these tips useful. Then I've got a repeat of some vet tips with Doctor Ash Mooney from Seeing Eye Dogs vet team talking about body condition score in dogs, and how to monitor your dog's physical fitness to help them be in best health.
Now here's my interview with Steph Shaw talking about recall. Hi Steph, thanks for joining me on the show today.
01:07S2
Thanks, Harriet. Glad to be here.
01:09S1
So I just wanted to talk about something that comes up quite a bit and is a pretty important thing for, well, anyone's dog, whether it's a senior dog, a puppy or a working dog or a pet dog, which is recall for anyone that doesn't know what does. What's the kind of definition of recall, or what would you consider to be a successful recall?
01:27S2
Yeah. So that's, I guess, getting your dog to come back to you as like the ideal recall is no matter what your dog's doing or where they are. You can call them, they'll come back to you to the point where you can take the collar, clip deletion and bail out.
01:44S1
Yeah, so and like you said, when it can be in any environment, I mean, the ideal thing really is that it's not just, I guess when you're in your house and you're calling your dog to you, you know, to feed it dinner, because that's going to be pretty easy because the dog's going to be kind of halfway there. The minute that you start to step in that direction. But that's going to be amongst kind of quite interesting things or, you know, we're talking about as well, things like recalling around other dogs and kids and food and that type of stuff.
02:14S2
Right, yeah, that's right. It's one of those really important skills, but also one of the hardest to teach, I guess the it's one of those things where teaching the basics of it, like getting the dog to move towards you, is super easy. But then in real life there's so many distractions. So having it really refined and polished, there's just so much work that goes into it.
02:36S1
And what are the other kind of things that I would have mentioned that might make it a little bit harder?
02:41S2
So when we're thinking about like, setting up dog training exercises, I love to think about the 3DS. So there's distance, duration and distraction. So the distance would be like how far you are away from your dog. So if you were touching your dog's collar, took a step back and ask them to come to you. Even if there's so many distractions, they're probably still going to come like you're right in their face there. Whereas if they were all the way across an oval and you call them might be a very different story, there's your distractions. So that's obvious. You know, that example of in the House, nothing else is going on. You've got a dinner bowl, you are the best thing around. They are going to come to you. Whereas, you know, the most common time I see people call their dog and it not work is when the dog's full on playing with another dog, the person calls the dog, and if the dog even hears them, they kind of go, Yeah, no, no.
And then your duration, I guess, is more, like, how often are they getting something good for coming back to you? So when we're thinking about duration and stays, it's, you know, how long can they stay there? But for a recall, it's, you know, are they expecting every time they come back to you, is something good going to happen? Do they know what's going to happen is that you only call them when you're about to clip the leash on and leave the park, and they start to anticipate like, ah, I don't want to come back to you because I'm not ready to go yet. I am having a lot of fun over here. Yeah.
04:09S1
And I guess as well, you know, when we're talking about, like, distractions, it's also like the environmental factors, right? So, like, you know, if you're at a park, it's not just the dogs. It's also like the scent or whatever is particularly reinforcing for that dog.
04:21S2
Yeah, absolutely.
04:22S1
And is that something you'd consider as well in terms of like that, how you'd reinforce the recall.
04:28S2
Yeah, yeah. And different dogs will have different things that are reinforcing to them. So, you know, some of the dogs that I work with love squeaky toys, even to the point where it's better than kibble. Like, if you take their squeaky tug and you squeak it in the park, they will come back to you. Yeah. Whereas for another dog, you could do that, and they would just completely blank you. Like, they don't give a shit.
04:51S1
It's like Labradors and some some with tennis balls and others are like, what is it? Why would I.
04:56S2
Yeah, yeah. So it's about knowing your dog and what's high value for them. And also mixing it up a little bit, like if they know that if they come, they're going to get one piece of kibble. But, you know, there's a whole group of dogs and they really want to say hi to them. They might bail out, but if there's a chance that they might get a, you know, a sardine or a piece of roast chicken that they never are allowed to get, maybe you've got a better chance of actually getting them to come back, because it's that maybe it's that gambling factor.
05:27S3
Yeah.
05:28S1
So when we're talking about, I suppose, kind of going to the basics, if your dog has absolutely, you know, no awareness of recall. So we're maybe talking about a baby puppy here or, or either that or a dog that you've never met before or, I don't know, a rescue dog. Yeah. How do you start teaching that baby puppy recall?
05:47S2
Yeah. So one of the ways that they do it that starts even before they go out to their puppy carers is whistle training. So we'd blow the whistle and put the food ball down. So they're starting to associate. They hear that whistle and something amazing happens. So they start to hear that whistle and come running. And from there it's sort of, building up that distance a little bit. So it might be practicing around the house when you think your puppy's going to come to you anyway. So not when they're right in the middle of chewing something, but when they're kind of looking bored and vaguely wandering your direction. Call them over, bop bop bop gum. And then give them something fun. It might be, you know, in the house, you're the best thing happening. They love you. So even just a bit of a praise and a tickle. It might be a toy, it might be a kibble, doing things like moving away from them.
So they're following you. So triggering that bit of a playful chasing instinct. Can be super, super helpful at getting dogs to come back to you. And one of the things that I love to practice with puppies quite young is the collar touch game. So reaching down, touching their collar, and then giving the treat because I see so many dogs that'll come towards you, and then you go to put the leash on and they run away again. So actually sort of teaching that as part of the behavior, come back until I can touch your collar and there's your reward and go and grab.
07:09S1
And reach for you and it's going to be this is this is the win here.
07:12S2
Yeah. Yep. And it's about sending them then back to play most of the time. So it's we're trying to make it... they're expecting when they're getting called something good is going to happen. Rather than I'm calling you over and I'm shoving you into a bath tub, or I'm looking in aisles, I'm giving you your medication. Yeah. Those things that maybe they don't particularly enjoy doing. Yeah.
07:38S1
So when we've done a bit of recall inside the house and the puppy started to come pretty reliably in those easier, I guess, in those easier or less tempting environments, how do we start to build up and, and and or on? In the same vein, if you've got a dog that is kind of or maybe this is actually different, you know, that kind of knows it, but sometimes picks and chooses, how do you, you know, I guess get them to recall even if the place or environment or there's a bit more of a distraction going on.
08:07S2
Yeah, yeah. So I guess safety is really important. So, you know, you're not going to take your dog out with an imperfect recall and take them off leash next to a busy road. That is just asking for trouble. So, setting up something like maybe a longer leash than normal or something like that where you can, you know, make sure the coat is off if they've got a training jacket so they know it's different than their normal walk. So you're actually doing a specific exercise. You're going to encourage them to go and sniff and then wait for a moment where they're just sort of looking up from something that's interesting. So maybe they've seen a bird off a little way away and they've gone, Oh, an interesting bird. And then the bird flies off and they go, oh, okay. Call them in that moment because they're going to be looking for the next interesting thing. And they're very likely to run over to you and again, doing a, some steps away, making cheerful noises. So think like, playschool presenter, like, well, look what's happening over here!
09:07S1
Yay. A bit of a crouch in it. Yeah. Gesture and stuff. Absolutely.
09:12S2
Yeah. So thinking about, you know, when puppies are playing with each other, if one puppy wants to get the other puppy to chase them, what do they do? They do that, like play bear. They get all bouncy and silly. They might pick up a toy and wave it around like, I've got this. Do you want this? So taking some of those just silly, fun things, the high pitched noises, the whistling, to just really encourage the puppy to come and enjoy your presence for a little bit. Call them over, give him a treat, have a play, have a cuddle, have a great time with them so that then you can send them back into the world. But they're thinking, oh, I kind of didn't want that to end. I was having such a great time hanging out with you, and now you're sending me out into this boring paddock with nothing to do. So having that leash, there is that bit of a safety backup. So they can't mess up. They can't run away. Yeah. But you're not using it to drag them in towards you over and over again. You're using all of those other things to get them in. And...
10:14S1
That's kind of also to some degree, a kind of legal requirement, isn't it, that if a dog is going to be awfully they have to you have to have kind of effective control. Right? So just as a as a note, I'm assuming that, yeah, if you don't have that, yeah. If you don't have that perfect recall, that long line also is a little bit of a kind of legal precaution as well to take or safety.
10:34S2
But yeah, absolutely. Like I think we've all had the situation of driving down the road and seeing a dog off leash next to the road and you don't know what it's going to do. And it's that moment of panic. It's very it's very scary. Um, so yeah, you know, keep keep your pups safe. But you know, it's building from, you know, maybe the long line depends like, on your puppy and your situation, but maybe you've got somewhere safe that you can let them do play. So, you know, maybe you go to the house of a friend who's also raising a seeing eye dog puppy or something. Let them have a bit of a play and practice in that controlled environment of calling them away from play. And you might need to really reduce your distance when you do that. So, you know, calling them from the other side of the yard isn't going to work, but maybe going up, touching the collar, getting them to come one step, giving them a treat and then sending them both back into play and...
11:28S1
Kind of starting before they're right in that middle of the kind of...
11:30S2
Yeah, waiting for waiting for a pause in the play. So healthy dog play will have ups and downs. They'll do their zoom and around and chase, and then you'll see them break off and sniff the ground. And that's your perfect time to, Hey, come over here! And we, we do want, with our recall to build up to the point where we can call them away from, you know, maybe chasing an animal or playing with a dog that's looking like it's getting a bit too much. But it does take a lot of patterning of just building that muscle memory of hear the word come to you hear the word come to you until they're not really consciously thinking about it. Because if they consciously think about it, it's not like...
12:10S1
Consider against it.
12:11S2
Yeah, actually, I'd rather chase that bird. Thank you. Yeah.
12:16S1
And so just to kind of, I guess finish off, you know, if you've gone that way and you think, oh, you know, I'm, I'm ready for this. And then your dog has, you know, I guess, made that choice to maybe not come. Then what might you do?
12:30S2
Yeah. Yeah. So I guess there's two main situations where that happens a lot. And one would be the dogs dashed out the front door. So, you know, you've had a guest over. They've stood around chatting and the dogs just go and you say, Dog, come inside and they go, Oh, are they not? So in that situation, what you don't want to do is run after the dog because they see you coming and they go chasing them and they run off. But doing something like dropping kibble or even if you don't have kibble, like, pretending that you have and going, Oh, this is really interesting over here. Look what I found. If they love the car, maybe unlocking the car, and they'll hear their car and go, Oh, we're going on an adventure. So sometimes those sorts of things work, or otherwise, just slowly following them down, ask them to sit and then get them and then go back inside, to avoid the chase.
If you're at the park and they've just given you the finger and gone, nah, I don't want to, think about: what can I change? What can I make easier? So standing around calling them over and over and over, and I see people do this in all different ways. Dog. Dog count. Dog biscuits. Dog, dog. Come here.
13:45S1
And the yelling, probably less helpful.
13:47S2
Yeah, exactly. And the dog just doesn't, it's not getting through. It's not working. So the change of tone of voice doesn't really do a whole lot. But thinking about, Oh, can I move closer to them? Can I use different body language? Could I do I have my whistle? Do I have a squeaky toy? Like, what can I change about this set up to make it more inviting for my dog to come over, or harder for them to ignore me? Yeah. Sometimes getting other people involved can help. So if your dog is wrestling with another dog, and every time your dog thinks about coming away, the other dog jumps on top of them and restarts. That's a really common one. So even asking the other person to also call their dog can give you a much better chance of getting your dog to come back to you.
14:33S1
And I guess in in those kind of circumstances too, is like setting it up better next time so that if they're going to, you know, if they're not going to come back, then maybe it's not quite time for that experience yet.
14:45S2
Yeah. And I've definitely had the situation even with like really well trained dogs that they just have an an off day and they just really want to roll in a dead rabbit. Oh, and I just have to go up to them. I'll call them back and I just go, you know what? You've lost your off-leash privileges for the day. Clip the leash on. Off we go. Like there are days you just have to do that, yeah, as well.
15:05S1
And at the end of the day, you know, it happened. And it's not something that they should be punished for.
15:12S2
Yeah. You know, they, they're dogs, it's they like asking them to leave all these amazing things about being a dog... the best thing about being a dog is using your nose, playing with other dogs, rolling and dead rabbits. So asking them to leave all of that, come here and focus and switch your brain on. You know, sometimes they're just not in the mood for it. That's so understandable. Some days you just want to chuck a sticky. You're not going to work, I'm sure. So, yeah, they're the same.
15:44S1
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for giving us some great tips on on recall. It's a really important one. So anyone with a dog out there, worth the worth a practice. Thank you. You've been listening to this Seeing Our Dog show on Vision Australia Radio. I hope you enjoyed those interviews with Steph Shore, puppy development trainer talking about recall. If you need assistance with your recall, don't forget to reach out to your trusted dog trainer, including if you're a singer, puppy, foster breeder, carer, you're seeing dog stuff, contact, or if you're a single handler reaching out to an instructor if you need assistance with this or any other training problems. Now I'm going to be playing an interview with Ashe Mooney from the senior vet team from the archives talking about body condition score. Thank you for listening. So when we talk about body condition score in dogs, what is that? What's the body condition score?
16:42S4
So, body condition scoring is pretty much our way of telling whether or not dogs are under or overweight. Given that there's so many different breeds of dogs. So it's not like humans where you can kind of go based off of BMI or just a weight, because, you know, a Chihuahua obviously weighs significantly different than a Great Dane. So and going by numbers, you know, if you have a cross breed or anything, it can be quite difficult to to know what amount of kilograms your animal should weigh. So body condition score is much easier. And it's what, that's used in conjunction with the weight, to determine whether or not your animal is a healthy weight. So you can always do a little Google search for a body condition scoring chart. Sometimes those are quite helpful because you can see the little pictures and kind of match the picture to your own animal.
But a really basic rundown of it is what I like to do is run my hands along the ribs of an animal. You should feel their ribs with gentle pressure if they're a nice, healthy weight, if the ribs are just sticking out and you barely have to touch the animal to feel their ribs, they're definitely too skinny. If you have to dig your fingers in to feel the ribs, then they're definitely overweight. So I think that that's a really easy way of judging whether or not your animal is an adequate weight at home. You know, obviously things like pregnancy and stuff like that can affect it. But in general, it works pretty well for animals. You can also do things like looking to see if they have a waist, you know, a nice little tuck of their tummy. Again, there are lots of lots of photos of these. And the body condition scoring is something that there are charts for pretty much every species for. So if you have a, a cat or a bird or a horse, um, you can look up the body condition scoring for those animals as well. And they're just a bit different because the animals have different anatomy.
18:43S1
But I guess I was thinking that my, my next question is going to be about kind of why, you know, is weight a metric of fitness, even kind of with like littermates or dogs of the same breed, which you've kind of covered. It's interesting, isn't it, because you'll have two littermates and one of them's tall and one of them's, you know, a completely different build, even of the same breed. And I know kind of standard, standard breeding makes it a little bit less that that way. But you can't really just say ours should be the same weight because they're even siblings, can you?
19:11S4
No, you can't, because, yeah, they can be different sizes. One might have been the runt of the litter. You know, it can really vary between animals, and there are medical conditions that can make it really difficult for an animal to either gain sufficient weight or lose sufficient weight. So, you know, if your animal is at a non-ideal body score and you modify the diet and the exercise and you're not seeing results, you're, you know, either not seeing a skinny animal get to a more healthy weight or a chubby animal get skinnier. Then it's probably worth discussing with your vet, maybe running a blood test to make sure that there isn't any sort of endocrine or hormonal cause that's preventing them from achieving a healthy weight.
19:59S1
So are there even any kind of other factors that would make, say this, a dog of like the same height as another, a different, different weight?
20:09S4
Some of it can be musculature. Some of it could be the actual diet they're being fed. So you might be, you know, at a dog park or something, and you're talking about how you both feed two cups of food to your Labrador a day, but every food has a different amount of calories, so you can't actually go by volume. You have to go by the calories in the food that you're feeding. And pretty much all animal foods have a feeding guide on the back where they tell you how much you should feed. And you know what kind of volume equals the appropriate amount of calories. So not all not all foods are the same for sure. And that that can be a really big factor. And it's something that's often lost, when people are talking casually about their animals diets.
20:55S1
I suppose, with the confetti chart. As well. That would be something to kind of keep in mind that actually that will also depend on the dog's exercise needs. So you kind of actually just go that that's got to be it. So if they're fat then that's not correct because that's what the thing that says.
21:11S4
Yeah. So some brands will give you like an active versus inactive animal feeding guide. So if you have a really kind of couch potato animal, it'll tell you to feed a bit less if you have, you know, like a working dog that's running 30 K a day, you're going to have to feed it more because it's expending more energy. And usually there is a guide on that. Or if you speak to your vet, they might discuss an alternative diet that's more appropriate to your animal's activity levels. I guess it is important to note that the main way that we manage weight in animals is through diet, rather than through exercise. Exercise is great for their muscles and their bones and all of that, but it's not going to make a massive difference in their body weight. So if you have a chubby dog that you're trying to get to lose weight, walking an extra K a day won't work as effectively as reducing the amount of food you're feeding it.
22:12S1
When it when we're kind of looking at that, judging the the the body conditioned by touch with that kind of negate some of the issues with people, you know, kind of thinking, Oh, my dog's just fluffy or, or longhaired or something. Yeah.
22:26S4
Yeah. You know, it definitely does affect it. A lot of people, especially know that poodle crosses are really common and they're very, very fluffy. You know, it can be really hard to tell how large a dog actually is when it's furry. So the running your hands along the ribs, I think is the easiest way of getting an objective measurement. Certainly easier than putting it on a scale and trying to piece together with the number means, your animal might be fat and fluffy, and that's fine. I think the other big thing is kind of changing our mindset on what a dog should look like. So, for example, I have a golden retriever who is a great body condition. She's kind of right on where I want her to be. You know, being a vet's dog. You'd hope that'd be the case, but people often come up to me and tell me that she's too skinny, because they're so accustomed to seeing obese golden retrievers that they think that the obese ones are actually what they should look like normally, and that anything that's a healthy body weight is actually too skinny. So I think that if we're constantly seeing overweight animals, it's easy to normalise them. But you need to recognise that just because a lot are overweight, it doesn't mean that they're all healthy. It might just mean that there's a lot of unhealthy animals of that breed.
23:49S1
Isn't it, something like half of dogs are overweight? There's some statistic and it's like mind blowing.
23:56S4
I don't know the actual numbers, but you know, colloquially from my experiences in private practice, I would say that it would be at least half of them. And sometimes it's, you know, people genuinely don't know or, you know, they do think that they're supposed to be bigger. It can be quite difficult when people just get a lot of enjoyment out of feeding their animal. And, you know, their animal loves it, and their animal's happy when they give them food, stuff like that. But I guess it's it's important to remember that you can kill something with kindness. And making them overweight does predispose them to a lot of issues. Issues with their heart. They can get arthritis earlier. They can have things like gastrointestinal or pancreatic issues. They can get diabetes. Really the the list is endless. And and on average, an overweight dog actually lives two years less than a normal weight dog.
24:57S1
I think it's really, it's really interesting, like I find, you know, obviously this kind of being anecdotal, but when I was growing up, I had a golden retriever who was a little bit overweight. When I say a little bit, I mean quite overweight when she was growing up and and when she actually lost that weight, she was actually just a happier dog. Like, she became more active at age seven than she had been when she was three and four because she was many kilos lighter. And, yeah...
25:25S4
It does make a big difference. And, you know, even humans who have lost weight and have gone from being profoundly overweight to being, you know, more of a healthy weight, they report having increased energy and it's easier to move. They don't have as many aches and pains. So you can you can extrapolate that it would be very similar for dogs, even though a dog can't tell you that in English.
25:49S1
The other kind of lost thing I was thinking is, for people that have, I guess, breeds that are kind of maybe bigger or more muscled. And they're not entirely sure what that should look like. So I've got a friend who's got a, you know, a bull Arab, so quite kind of big and and chunky and it's just, like, solid. Can you work with a probably what, say, work with a vet to work out what that body score should look like?
26:13S4
Yeah, definitely. You know, it can be a bit difficult. I find things like bulldogs and, yeah, bull Arab, some some kind of really muscly staff guys. Those kinds of dogs can be hard to body condition score because they have so much muscle on them. That you can't really tell. And that's also an issue that human athletes face because their muscle weighs so much that it actually puts them in a BMI that's considered overweight, even if they're an Olympian or something, and they're clearly a very fit individual. So you can, that's definitely a situation where I'd work with your vet. The body condition scoring to some degree will work because typically the muscles that overlay the ribs don't get super massive. You know, your dog isn't out there doing any like lat exercises and stuff like that. So, um, usually you can still do the running your hands along the ribs trick with a very muscly dog.
But if your dog just has a kind of awkward body shape and you really can't tell, just bring them into the vet. And it's not a big deal. We can always discuss a plan and figure out if it's actually a good way or not. For your animal, it's just us giving you that advice because we want what's best for them and what's going to keep them healthiest for longest. Um, it's not a commentary on who you are as a person or your lifestyle or any of that. It's not meant to be offensive. It's we're just meant to be, I guess, championing the welfare of.
27:42S1
You've been listening to the Seeing Eye Dogs Show on Vision Australia Radio. I hope you enjoyed my interviews with puppy development trainer Steve Shaw, talking about recall and with Doctor Ashe Mooney talking about Body Condition Score. If you'd like to find out more about seeing eye dogs, the work we do, or how you can help, head to our website at S-E-D-at- visionaustralia -dot- org. Don't forget to tune in, same time next week for another episode of The Seeing Eye Dogs Show on Vision Australia Radio.
