Notes on RRR for Training Recall

[Another reply to a PGD post:]

On Jan 26, 2010, at 10:06 PM, another poster wrote:

You might try the book "really reliable recall" if you're having recall issues. The trick is to be more rewarding than whatever else is going on, so the dog wants to return to you.

I'm sorry, this is incorrect. Nearly every dog trainer -- and this doesn't just apply to field trainers -- soon realizes that if you have to be more rewarding than "whatever else is going on," it will be impossible to create a reliable recall in many dogs.

Some points about RRR in particular:

* The RRR program is wonderful for pet dogs and dogs in other sports. I used it with Lumi and it once saved her life, as documented in an article on recall by September Morn in Dog Fancy magazine some years ago.

* RRR does NOT depend upon you being more rewarding than whatever else is going on, nor does any other high-quality recall training program.

* RRR is unfortunately not adequate for training a field recall.

* Even if it were, RRR is explicitly NOT for everyday recall. According to Leslie Nelson, the woman who designed RRR, it will fall apart if you use it for routine recall. It continues to work ONLY if you save it for emergencies.

* An interesting phenomenon has been recorded by some people who've train RRR: It can actually cause undesirable responses to increase! The reason for this is that the RRR recall cue is highly reinforced, which turns it into a conditioned reinforcer, much like a clicker. For some dogs, the cue then actually acts like a clicker. For example, the dog is chasing a bicycle and the trainer calls "DARLING" (or whatever the RRR cue is). Yes, the dog puts on the brakes and comes running for treats, but in addition, the dog has just been reinforced ("clicked") for chasing the bicycle. Each time a bicycle goes by, the handler calls "DARLING" and the dog in effect gets clicked and treated again. This is called "shaping" (though of course it's inadvertent). One day, the dog catches the bicycle.

We can discuss the mechanisms of how a recall can be trained WITHOUT being more rewarding than whatever else is going on at some point in the future, but for now, I just want to clarify that nothing you can do can make you more rewarding than the things a field retriever discovers as alternatives in the field.

LL&L