twenty month recall update on our treeing walker coonhound mix, from a door bolt and a three hour chase through the state forest to a whistle recall i would bet real money on, the long line year nobody wants to hear about, the premack trick that finally worked on a nose with a dog attached, and the $40 spray collar mistake that cost us two months, posting because every hound thread has someone swearing scenthounds cant learn recall and i believed them for a year

Banjo is a treeing walker coonhound mix, roughly 3 now, adopted at around 14 months from a hound heavy rescue in kentucky, and on day 9 with us he shouldered through a storm door that wasnt fully latched and was gone. not gone like the neighbors yard, gone like three hours, two miles, into the state forest, and we got him back because a jogger grabbed his dragging leash while he was nose down in a creek bed and called the number on his tag. i sat in the truck afterward and shook for a while and then i did what everyone does, i googled coonhound recall, and i found forum thread after forum thread of hound people saying some version of "a scenthound off leash is a scenthound you used to own." i believed that for about a year. this post is the update i went looking for that night and never found.

the gear and money first because its short. $32 thirty foot biothane long line, $13 acme whistle, two of them actually because i lost the first in a river, $185 for a six week recall class that was worth double, a $40 citronella spray collar that i will get to because it was the single dumbest purchase of the whole project, and a notes app tally that cost nothing and mattered more than everything else on this list. no shock collar, not because im precious about them but because our trainer was confident we wouldnt need one and she turned out to be right.

months 1 through 4 were the long line year in miniature and the least fun part. line on for every single outdoor second, and we charged the whistle like a slot machine, two pips then chicken, ten times a day, in the kitchen, on walks, mid nap, until the whistle woke something ancient in his spine before his brain even got a vote. the citronella disaster happened in month 3, i got impatient with the long line and bought the spray collar thinking id shortcut the proofing, first time it fired he was mid recall about 15 feet from me, and it took a genuinely embarrassing amount of counter conditioning to get him to come all the way IN again instead of stopping ten feet out looking worried. two months, roughly, to undo one button press. take the $40 and buy chicken.

month 5 is where the premack thing happened and everything changed. our trainer watched him blow off a recall to work a rabbit line and instead of correcting it she said, theres your paycheck, use it. new rule, whistle, he comes, he gets a piece of chicken, and then, this is the entire trick, i say GO SNIFF and send him straight back to whatever glorious smell he left. coming to me stopped costing him the trail and started being a toll booth on the way back to it. within three weeks the recall off active scent went from maybe to mostly, and i want to be honest that i did not believe this would work, it felt like negotiating with a nose, it turns out thats exactly what it is and the nose takes the deal.

months 9 through 14, first unclips inside a $14 an hour fenced sniffspot field, then bigger fields, then quiet trails at dawn with the line dragging, then the line off but hanging on my shoulder like a superstition. we are now at month 20 and i would put real money on the whistle at 90 percent, he recalls off other dogs, off most fresh scent, off a picnic in progress once which is the proudest ive ever been of a living creature. the missing 10 percent is deer at close range and i treat it like weather, he doesnt get off leash freedom in high deer areas at dusk, thats not a training failure thats a management decision about a dog with two hundred million scent receptors and a genetic job description. still maintenance to this day, the whistle pays out 3 or 4 times a week forever, the tally app says we are somewhere north of 2,900 paid recalls. hounds can learn recall. it costs a year and it looks stupid in the middle. happy to answer anything