Meeting others and your dogs recall

A question for those of you who meet up with their dogs.
Is your dogs recall good ... and if not do you let him/her offlead with the other dogs ?

Id love to meet up with those people near me and let my pair have a run with all the other dogs , but their recall is total pants , well Gypsy's isnt bad , but around other dogs even her recall goes to pot

Touch wood we have never had a problem, recall with our three is good, and they have been trained from young to be off lead. I do recall & ''wait'' if i see dogs on lead as i always pressume there is a reason why they are on lead....unless told otherwise, as have met on lead walkers simply because the dog is very excitable and nothing more.

In a pack we have found they seem to stick with one another anyway, our neighbours dog has crap recall, but he does let it off lead with mine as it just follows them around but when he's on his own he runs off

It is kind of the unwritten rule here that if both dogs are off lead it is ok to allow them meet, but if one is on lead either recall your dog back to you or put it on the lead too. This mentality seems to work well for us 95% of the time, not counting the numpties with aggressive dogs off lead and those who have no control of their animals.

As for the recall, it is tough to give you a straight answer. In my opinion a dog should at least have a reasonable recall before you let it off the lead. Having a dog with a poor recall off the lead in a very public area is likely to have you end up in a less than desirable situation, particularly as let's face it you aren't usually too far from a road in this country.

Got any dog owning friends you can meet up with?

Just keep working on that recall.

My dog will recall if there are no other dogs around but if she is playing with other dogs she will not come back.

But I can let her off with dogs she knows and she will stay with them. Although she might say hello to passing dogs, she will always come back to the dogs she first started playing with. I just make sure that she only plays with dogs who have a good recall!

My dogs recall is pretty good but they are off their leads 95% of the time so they are used to it. I don't believe that any dog has 100% recall. Maybe 99.99999999999999% but not 100%

I've found that most dog's recall is better when there's a few of them around (apart from my friend's terrier who just does what she likes ).

My girl is now 9.5 months old and she simply wont recall despite training........ If she has her nose to the ground sniffing something (usually eating other dogs poo, ugh!), she wont come back until she is finished or unless I have a complete meltdown and scream at her.

On the positive side she completely ignores bicycles, and most strangers........ and if we are walking along the canal path and somebody appears walking towards us she automatically sticks by my side & I usually put her on lead.

Basically my dog only responds to commands if she can see the point - which isn't brilliant I guess, but she is still young and we haven't done training classes yet.

Interestingly enough if we are out with both our dogs at the same time (the other one is much older and recalls 100% of the time, instantly), the puppy will follow back with the other dog instantly and rarely wonders more than a few feet from her friend.

Unfortunately I can't walk them together most of the time, also the older one is a bit dog aggressive and I don't want the puppy picking up bad habbits.

We have real problems with our boy (10 months old) and recall as some people may now from my previous plea for help! Had two nasty incidents a few months ago where I couldn't recall him - he wasn't nasty or aggressive to the dogs he was playing with and I was right there ready to grab him but these other dog owners did have a real go at me. As a consequence totally lost my confidence at walking him off lead which was all a bit daft as met lots of other people on walks who understood the difficulties with recall and a fun loving, albeit big, puppy!

I tend now to walk him on lead and have started from the beginning with recall - ie getting it 100% in the garden - am now at the stage of being able to introduce other distractions but am very nervous about doing it for fear of meeting people who aren't happy, if his recall isn't perfect. Its a tricky one really because obviously can only work on recall around distraction ie other dogs, with other dogs around...we've met friendly people who we sometimes walk and his recall is always perfect, I suspect because he's copying the other dogs. Am yet to pluck up the courage to try him off lead with other unknown dogs....

Sounds like you are in a similar situation to me then.

I have lost a bit of confidence lately at letting mine off lead too. She also has this annoying habbit of hanging back a LONG way on walks. I usually walk down the canal path (live in the city, nowhere else to go), and sometimes she will stop to sniff something, I carry on walking and she is virtually out of site before she decides to catch me up, and if I call her on I get ignored!

This is fine in some spots, because there are only so many on & off points to the canal and you can see a long way in all directions, but in other places it can be a nightmare as a mother and pram / small children could appear at any moment and I wouldn't have enough time to catch up and put her on lead.

Also, mine is a very big GSD X breed, she is very friendly and still a puppy at 9 months, but the sheer size and colouring / appearance of a GSD is enough to really scare some non-dog or dog phobic people.

The Asian community and the children around here seem especially wary of dogs (I'm lead to believe this is because of a few attacks and a few Asians being involved in dog fighting), so it is especially important for me to show I have proper control of my dog at all times.

It sucks having a young dog of a sociable breed. I remember coming back from some walks on the verge of tears, it was THAT bad sometimes. But I have to say that as my current dog matured his recall improved naturally. By 18 months it was a million times better.

I find that quite heartening. So at 15 months we haven't got too long to go!

Actually my dog is considerably better than she was 3 months ago so there is hope for us all.