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Recall is often recommended as the main – and sometimes the ONLY – fix for the problems that are caused by prey drive. It makes sense. If your dog will run back as soon as you call them, you will never have problems with them chasing prey or running too far away. A recall is a simple, easy solution.
Only – as the late, great, Terry Pratchett said,
Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.
It applies strongly to training high prey drive dogs to do a recall – or in other words, come when you call them. Let’s explore why it’s so complicated and what you can do to make it easier.
Recent research into what high prey drive dogs actually do when they encounter prey shows that most of the focus for prey drive is getting closer to prey. The research also shows that dogs will start their efforts to get closer long before they start to chase.
Most dogs will start by searching - or hunting – to find prey. Some dogs will not move far from their person while doing it and other dogs will travel for miles during that phase. Some of the scent hounds are expected to travel miles while searching for prey. In the UK, packs of Bloodhounds take part in hunts for human runners – often the runners are people who do fell running or marathon running. Those dogs can easily cover 12 – 20 miles in the course of a couple of hours while searching out their prey. The humans follow them on horseback to keep up. When they find the runner, they happily greet him or her. The dogs are well socialised with people and do not pose a risk to their quarry.
When dogs have located prey, they will almost always want to approach. What their approach looks like will differ from dog to dog. Some dogs will run toward the prey. Others will carefully orient toward it. Some will stare strongly at the prey. Some will carefully and slowly stalk it. Some dogs – like the Bloodhounds – might become more intense. They might move faster or make more noise.
Apart from dogs like the Bloodhounds above who find their ‘prey’ and then have a party with them, for most dogs, there is a point during their approach where the prey will move and that movement will start a chase. Often it is when that chase starts that people try to recall their dog. Those recalls can be difficult for the dogs because by that stage, they are usually aroused and are usually focused on the task at hand – which is doing something with the prey.
By the time they are chasing, a dog’s focus on the task at hand is likely to be so intense that they won’t even hear a recall. That’s a big part of why prey drive has such a strong reputation for being impossible to work with. At the point, most people can see there is a problem, the dog is concentrating too hard to listen. A recall is a bit like approaching a sports fan at a vital point in a game and trying to talk to them about what you should cook for dinner that night. It’s not likely to go well.
The final stage of prey drive for dogs is about dealing with the prey. It happens if the dog catches up to the prey and is where the dog would bite the prey. Recalls are almost always being used to try and stop the bite phase or make the chase shorter.
For most people, a walk is an activity that means travelling on a path of some sort and going from one place to another.
With high prey drive dogs, what that sort of walk does is takes them constantly into new areas to search for prey. It also makes it more likely that they will locate prey and start to approach.
You may well be blissfully unaware that there is even prey around – until suddenly your dog is chasing something. Or – you might be in the situation I was often in with one of my dogs. One minute, your dog is peacefully trotting along in front of you and the next minute they are running off – after what seems to be fresh air.
At those times, the dogs have picked up a scent and have started their approach.
For dogs who have been focused on searching, sometimes even that approach stage is too late for a recall to be successful. If approach turns into chase, recalls often fail.
To make matters worse, it is really common for recalls to be used like an invisible lead. Whenever dogs start to go too far, are investigating the world around them or have started to chase, a recall is often the first thing that is done to try and stop them.
Even without prey drive being involved, that can go badly wrong. On a recent walk, we were joined by a young, playful dog. He had a brilliant time playing with one of the dogs I was with. He stayed with us for a long time. His owner stood at a distance and whistled him repeatedly. He ignored her.
When he got tired, he lay down on the grass and rested. Then he joined us again.
Eventually his owner gave up whistling and came over to collect him, telling him he was being naughty.
I’ve met him a few times and my view is that he isn’t naughty – it’s more that to him the recall means fun ends. So he ignores it. He’s a clever dog!
He has also ignored his owner to jump up at me when I was out without a dog. I was able to help out that time by pretending that her dog wasn’t there so that he would get bored of me.
I have also seen him ignore his owner when the dog with me wasn’t playful and was sitting between my legs while the young, playful dog circled us and tried to start a game. That time, again, he had to be collected.
For dogs like that dog, it is often relatively easy to fix the recall problem by setting up situations with friends or even strangers in the park where the recall is rewarded by the dog getting to meet and play with a friendly dog. In my experience most people with friendly, playful dogs are happy to help out with that sort of training.
When you bring prey drive into the mix, the chances of that sort of thing happening are higher and the fix often isn’t so easy. Mostly because finding a suitable reward is harder than it is for that young, playful dog.
You might have heard dog trainers tell you to use high value treats when you are at training classes or workshops. What they mean by that is food that your dog prefers most.
Dogs have strong preferences – just like we do. If you want your dog to ignore the dog next to them and listen to you, it’s easier if you have something that your dog really wants to use as a reward.
The problem with prey drive is often that getting to one or more of the stages we talked about earlier is way better to your dog than any food you have or any toy you produce. A scientist called David Premack researched all of this in the 1950s and one of the things that came from his work is the knowledge that it is important to understand how rewarding a reward is compared to everything else that your dog can do or get.
If you consistently recall your high prey drive dog every time they start to search, approach or chase prey and then give them their most favourite food or toy, they are still likely to ignore the recall over time.
What happens is a bit like saying to a child who hates reading books that if they finish their homework, you’ll give them a book to read. That child is going avoid finishing homework.
Have you ever been to a dog training class where you were told to feed your dog after class rather than before? Or had somebody suggest that if you want to get a better recall you should walk your dog before breakfast rather than waiting until afterwards?
If you have, the reason for that is that whenever animals are deprived of doing something instinctive, they react by being more motivated to do that thing. Animal behaviour scientists have been using this knowledge for years before it became something that dog trainers recommended. Hungry rats would be trained to press levers and their hunger would help to motivate them to solve the puzzle to get the food.
Prey drive in dogs is instinctive too. For sure, it is complex behaviour. It is deeply rooted in the instincts of dogs – and selective breeding has been used to strengthen it in many breeds.
Yet – one of the most common pieces of advice given is to train a rock solid recall so that it can be used to deprive the dog of doing whatever it is they want to do with prey. When it is difficult to get a reliable recall – which it often is – then leads, fences and walking in places without prey are also used to deprive dogs of access to prey.
Perhaps if prey could be avoided entirely, then it would work.
But – complete avoidance is very hard to achieve. So what often happens is the dogs, having been deprived of that instinctive behaviour encounter prey of some sort and they lose it. Many dogs end up so motivated to find prey that just stepping outside the door has them so wound up they cannot eat. And they certainly won’t recall if they think prey might be around.
The motivation to do something with prey for some dogs is so strong that if they can’t, they become stressed. The reason that welfare legislation stipulates that animals cared for by humans must be able to perform natural behaviour is to reduce stress.
Stressed dogs often develop behaviour problems. Some dogs become fearful due to stress. Other dogs become reactive. Others get over the top and leap around or grab their lead. Over time those problems can become habitual and hard to get rid of. That’s why natural behaviour like eating a good diet, drinking fresh water, getting enough sleep, moving freely and engaging in their prey drive is so important for dogs.
There are three main things that you can do to resolve the problems with recalls and make your dog love coming back to you:
1. By far the best thing to do isn’t really about training at all – it is about letting your dog perform that instinctive behaviour. To do that, you need to learn exactly what your dog wants to do with prey. Then you need to help your dog learn that you will help them do whatever it is they want to do.
Dogs can have preferences that range from wanting to only search but nothing else to dogs who really only want to eat the prey and don’t care about the other parts. It is important to know where your dog sits on that spectrum and what your dog loves most.
Once you know, you can learn how to tailor rewards so that they do give your dog the prey drive fulfilment that they need while keeping your dog and the prey safe.
Working all of that out and helping your dog develop trust that you are going to give them what they need is a longer process than the next two things to do. It is also the most fascinating and transformative thing you can do with a high prey drive dog.
I can help you with this longer, much more interesting work too. I have the High Prey Drive Club all ready for you to join. It is setup so that I can give you as much tailored support as you need to work through that process.
2. Make sure that you have carefully trained your dog what the recall sound means. You need to carefully add in distractions. And carefully add in the distance your dog is away from you. Even in dogs without a prey drive, a reliable recall won’t happen unless you have trained it.
If you don’t know how, check out my bite-size training on teaching a good recall. It costs £20.
3. Teach your dog to stay closer to you and to want to be with you. A dog who will do that is far easier to walk than a dog who constantly needs to be recalled to get them back to you. If you don’t know how, I have a bite-size training on how to teach that exact thing. It costs £20.
For reasons that are not down to a lack of training on your part, recall is a hard ask with high prey drive dogs. It is important for them to learn to recall. Equally as important is that they learn to keep an eye on where you are. Even more important is that you learn how to fulfil your dog’s predatory needs. If those instinctive needs are not met, the chances are that you will continue to struggle with your high prey drive dog’s recall no matter how you train and manage your dog.
Broseghini, A., Lõoke, M., Guérineau, C., Marinelli, L. and Mongillo, P., 2024. Ethogram of the predatory sequence of dogs (Canis familiaris). Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 279, p.106402. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2024.106402
Knapp, T.J., 1976. The Premack principle in human experimental and applied settings. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 14(2), pp.133-147. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967(76)90067-X
McLennan, T., 2023. Does the attention a dog pays to their owner increase after the dog engages in activities that mimic the predatory preferences of that dog (Canis familiaris)?. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 263, p.105944. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2023.105944
Pratchett, T. (2010) I Shall Wear Midnight. London: Doubleday.
Timberlake, W., 1997. An animal-centered, causal-system approach to the understanding and control of behavior. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 53(1-2), pp.107-129. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-1591(96)01154-9
Would you like to be in the know?
Join my mailing list, get my monthly newsletter and be kept up to date about special offers via email.
I am the founder of Best Dog Learning and Stuff and a massive prey drive enthusiast. I've lived with high prey drive dogs for over 20 years and I love them. I run the awesome High Prey Drive Club where I help my members learn to have fabulous walks and happy lives with their high prey drive dogs.
I am a published researcher in my field with both my original research and my review of the literature looking at prey drive in dogs being published in the respected journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
I peer review for Applied Animal Behaviour Science to help bring quality research into the world.
I am the author of Canine aggression: Rehabilitating an aggressive dog with kindess and compassion.
I want to show you how easy and fun it can be to have a high prey drive dog.
If you'd like help with your dog, I'm ready to help you right now.