Meet Oakley

We found Sara and Oakley through a Craigslist add they posted for a puppy play group.  Oakley is a Great Dane mix around Pickles' age.  We've been meeting about once a week in the evening for half an hour or so to let the puppy run, wrestle, and bite each other.  Oakley is pretty goofy looking; he runs with a gallop and can't keep up with Pickles.  They play pretty well together though.

We have been working a lot on recall (Come) because that was the number on thing we were looking for in a dog... excellent recall no matter what.  We watched Patricia McConnell's DVD "Lassie Come" where she gives some great tips.  We each have our own recall word that we save for special circumstances.  Here are the rules we try to follow with it.

1.) We always have a treat (preferably a really good treat) to reward Pickles when we use this word to call him
2.) We always let him go back to whatever fun thing he was doing or have something else really fun for him to do when we call him.
3.) We don't use it very often when we're not training.
4.) We don't use it if there is a good chance he won't come.

We started with no distractions and have slowly worked up to calling him from farther away with more distraction.  The ultimate is calling him out of playing with another puppy.  So far we only call him away from one other puppy and try to do it when there is a natural break or pause in the play.  In the middle of this video you can hear/see Mark calling Pickles out of playing with Oakley to come to him with his recall word "Velcro".