If there's one skill every dog owner wants, it's a reliable recall. The ability to call your dog back from anything — another dog, a squirrel, a fascinating smell, a stranger with food — is genuinely life-saving. It's also, for many dogs, the hardest thing to teach.
The reason recall is so difficult is that you're competing with the real world. Whatever your dog is running towards, it's interesting. Your voice, in that moment, needs to be more interesting. And the thing that makes your voice more interesting than a squirrel is, almost always, the treat that follows it.
Why High-Value Treats Change Everything
There's a concept in dog training called 'value hierarchy' — a ranking of how motivating different things are for your specific dog. At the bottom: kibble, standard biscuits, things they get all the time. At the top: real meat, real fish, things that smell incredible and taste extraordinary.
For recall training, you want to be working at the top of that hierarchy. A dog who comes back to a piece of air-dried chicken when they're twenty metres away from an interesting dog is making a rational choice. Make that choice worth making.
What Makes the Best Recall Treats
Genuinely high aromatic value. Fish-based treats — sprats, salmon, whitebait — are extraordinarily pungent and tend to cut through outdoor distractions very effectively.
Small enough to deliver instantly. No bigger than your little fingernail. Fast delivery keeps the timing tight.
Soft enough to eat in one go. A crunchy treat that takes five seconds to eat breaks the connection between the recall and the reward.
Reserved exclusively for recall. Whatever treat you use for recall training, don't use it for anything else. The moment it becomes everyday, it loses its power.
Building a Rock-Solid Recall
Never punish a dog who comes back slowly. Even if it took three calls and two minutes, that dog came back. Always reward it.
Practice before you need it. Build recall in easy situations far more often than you use it in hard ones.
Make coming back the best thing that happens. Treat, praise, then release them to go play again. Never only call the dog back when it's time to go home — they'll learn that recall equals end of fun.
Our Best Treats for Recall
From our natural dog treats range, the options that consistently work best for recall are fish-based treats (sprats particularly), air-dried chicken and duck pieces, and venison or rabbit for dogs who've built up a tolerance to more common proteins.
For bulk training, our natural dog treat boxes offer much better price per treat — which matters when you're training daily.
