Anyone who knows me, knows that one of my major goals with all of my dogs is off leash reliability. They must earn it by demonstrating the skills I require to have the privilege of being off leash.

Yes, it is a privilege not a right. It must be earned. And that privilege can be lost if you're not meeting my expectations. There are consequences to your actions.

We generally walk twice a day and love to go hiking whenever we can. Which is never as often as we'd like, of course. We prefer, when our dogs are ready, to walk off leash. Our dogs get much better exercise this way. But it needs to be done safely.

This is a story about Romeo. We lost him in 2018, but I have a million stories about him that I still share often.

Anyone who met Romeo early in his life knows that he was a handful! Smart. High energy. Intense. A handful, to be sure.

We worked very very hard on building the right skills for off leash reliability. We had to work very hard for the first two years of his life.

But he did well and we gradually worked up to the off leash reliability I wanted and needed for him to be able to walk off leash on our walks and hikes. He had earned his off leash privileges and we were both enjoying our walks and hikes.

One day we were on one of our usual walks on the trails on our property. We came up over a small ridge, and Romeo spotted the deer before I did. There were about a half dozen of them in our field. They took off. Romeo took off after them.

I called him, and he did NOT come back. He kept pursuing. The deer headed straight for the busy road we live on. At this point in time, we did NOT have gates/fencing on your property to prevent dogs from getting into the road. The deer disappeared over the ridge and behind the scrub oak heading to the road, and Romeo was in pursuit.

I ran too, but clearly I am no match for deer or a Vizsla in his prime. I thought for sure at least one of them was going to be hit by a car. We were just very lucky that no cars happened to be driving by at that moment.

Romeo actually came running back to me. He had NOT gone into the road and pursued the deer beyond our property.

While he did NOT come when he was called, he in fact DID respect our boundary training we had worked hard on. He knew where he was allowed to go and not. And despite the fun of chasing deer, he did stop and come back once they crossed our property line.

So, what did I do when he returned? Did I punish or scold him for not coming? No. Did I rejoice that he respected our boundary training and chose to come back to me once the deer left our property? You bet!

It was much too late at that point to scold him for not coming when called – too much had happened since that recall. He did make one bad choice, but followed it up with one very good choice.

What was the consequence though? Because he did NOT meet all of my expectations for off leash privileges, he did lose those privileges.

For the next TWO MONTHS, he was back on the long line for walks. We worked very hard for those two months to reiterate all the skills he did have but forgot on that one day. We worked hard on our recalls and all the other skills required to earn that off leash privilege back. And after two months, he did get that privilege back.

And for the rest of his life, he never lost that privilege again. For the remainder of his life, he was nearly perfect on walks. I almost never had to call him to COME for the rest of his life on walks. He checked in with me. He kept track of me. I rarely had to call because he was so tuned in, I rarely ever needed it.

Those first two to three years were a lot of work. But those remaining years were the BEST. I could not have asked for a more perfect dog on walks and hikes after that. He was amazing. But we worked hard to get there. And he learned that there were consequences to NOT making good choices when you are given a lot of freedom.

He was the best dog ever.

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