Teaching recall when there are stray dogs on every street

Recall is the one command that keeps a dog alive, and it is much harder to build here than the guides admit, because the place you have to practise has loose dogs in it.

The standard advice still holds — long line indoors first, never call the dog for anything it dislikes, never call twice. The local questions are the ones nobody answers. Where do you actually train off-leash: parks, empty plots, six in the morning? What do you do when a stray comes at you mid-session? Has anyone built reliable recall on a dog that was already reactive to other dogs?

If you have a dog you genuinely trust off-leash in this country, I would like to know how you got there.

Honest answer: I do not have off-leash recall in public and I have stopped pretending it is a realistic goal here. I have excellent recall in enclosed spaces and a long line everywhere else. That is not a failure, it is the environment.

6am on the beach in Karachi, before anyone is up. That is the only place I let mine off. By 8am there are four packs out and it is not worth it.

On the stray-comes-at-you question, since nobody has answered it and it is the one that actually matters:

Do not run. Do not scream. Do not pick up your dog if it is big enough to fight back, because now the fight is at your face height.

Stand still, put yourself between them, and be big and loud in a low voice. Most street dogs here are territorial rather than predatory — they are asking you to leave, not trying to kill you, and once you are past the boundary they stop.

Carry something. An umbrella you can open suddenly is the best thing I have found; it makes you enormous and it is a barrier without being an attack. A handful of stones works but you are now the person throwing stones at dogs in your own neighbourhood, and they remember you.

And walk the same route at the same time. The local dogs get used to you and your dog, and after a few weeks most of them stop caring. The problem is nearly always a route you have never walked before.

The umbrella tip is excellent and I have never heard it before. Ordering one.

Reactive dog here, so answering that part. Two years of work and he will now recall away from another dog at about thirty feet. He will not do it at ten. I know exactly what his limit is and I manage the distance rather than testing it. That is as far as I have got and I think it might be as far as we get.