Frikandel
Hi everyone, I’m trying to stay calm on the outside for my dog but I’m beside myself.
A bit of history:
- We trained our dog Nola an emergency recall with very high value treats (pieces of steak mostly). It is the word “Dock” with an extended “o”. I’ve never seen it not work before today. We only use it if she is in danger or during training.
- She has a non emergency recall “Contact”, which is used much more often.
- She also knows to drop things “Deploy” but this is not that consistent and we do have to trade sometimes (or pick her up to drop it if it’s potentially dangerous like a chicken bone or poop).
- Relevant to this story, she also knows a trick to spin around when we say “Yaw”.
- We also play a game on walks where she picks up litter and brings it home. We ask her to “Accio” it (bring it to us at the bin) and “Deploy” and she gets a treat for tidying up the neighbourhood a bit.
There is a field near our house. It’s surrounded by hedges but the entrance is about 5 meters from a busy road (not main road but corner of a shopping area). We often go there to let her run around off leash a bit.
I was there with her alone, and there was a bird circling and making quite loud sounds. She chased the bird a bit which I thought was cute but otherwise we were playing fetch with her ball.
After I threw the ball one time she picked it up but immediately dropped it and ran to a nearby tree. She picked up what I thought could be a stick. So I asked her to “contact” to see what it was, she just stood there. I thought this was fine, since we are playing and she is allowed to have some agency what she wants to do in the field.
But I was not sure it was a stick so after a minute or so of her standing there looking at me with the stick in her mouth and head tilted I started to walk towards her. I asked “Hey Noley, what do you have there? Can I take a look?” She didn’t move. I tried “Deploy” and also no response. I tried again this time showing a treat I had to trade, nothing. I tried “Contact”, nothing. At this point I was sure it wasn’t a stick as I was closer, and it was rounded at the ends.
So I sat down near the tree thinking she would bring it to me, but she just stood there with her head cocked and this thing in her mouth. I went to pick up the ball and see if I can distract her, nothing. Then I asked her to “Yaw”, which she did but then started walking towards the exit of the field.
At this point I started to get nervous. I called her and said “uh uh”. She did stop briefly but then continued towards the exit. When she was at the exit I emergency recalled her because there is a road. She started to run towards me, but then changed her mind and bolted out of the field.
At this point, I was very concerned and chased after her using the emergency recall. Sometimes she moved a few steps towards me but always changed her mind. A car and bike had to stop as she ran across the road. I’m so happy they did. She could have died. I think they shouted at me but I was focused on trying to get my dog.
She kept walking forward and stopping looking at me, so I thought maybe I should walk away from her and not chase her. So I tried that and went round the corner but she didn’t follow. I rang my partner and called red alert and where we are.
When I reappeared I saw she was running to the next road toward our house. So it seemed that moving away from her was not working so I think I need to catch her. I ran after her and she also is running. Then she sits down in the middle of the road and looks at me and I try again the emergency recall, she gets up again and starts towards me but then bolts instead to our house. Two cars and two bikes had to stop this time. This is obviously completely unacceptable.
She ran home. When I got home she had dropped the (what I now know was a frikandel), and was looking at me. My partner came up behind her, picked her up, threw out the frikandel. I have no idea if this was an awful move on my part but when we were inside I gave her the treat I had tried to trade in the field. Then I broke down into tears.
I’m asking here:
- What I did wrong
- What I should have done
- How to prevent this in future both out on walks but also during training
Thank you for any advice. I feel absolutely awful for putting my best friend in danger and will do whatever is needed to prevent this from happening again.
In case it is important she is a 4 year old Japanese Spitz, spayed.