Recall Training a Vizsla Puppy

Starting recall training at 10 weeks is exactly the right call — Vizslas are brilliant but they develop a serious independent streak fast, and recall is the one skill where early habits really stick. The most effective combination is a high-value treat that your puppy genuinely can't ignore, paired with a long line so you can practise in open spaces without the risk of them blowing you off entirely. To point you in the right direction: are you looking for treats, training aids like a long line or whistle, or the full setup? And are you training solo or with a class?

Perfect timing. Three days in, she's still mapping her world around you — that's a genuine window. For a Vizsla puppy, the treat needs to be soft, small, and smelly enough to beat every distraction going. What are you currently using to reward her, if anything?

Kibble will work indoors but it won't cut it in the park once there are squirrels involved. At 10 weeks she can handle soft meat treats — the key is keeping them tiny, roughly pea-sized, so you can do lots of repetitions without filling her up. I'd go with Forthglade Natural Liver Treats. They're air-dried lamb liver, single ingredient, suitable from puppyhood, and Vizslas tend to go absolutely wild for them. Soft enough to break into tiny pieces, not greasy, and the smell carries well outdoors which matters a lot for recall work. For the training aid, a 5-metre biothane long line is the right length at this stage — long enough to give her the feeling of freedom, short enough that you can still reel her in smoothly. That combination — liver treats and a long line — is genuinely all you need to build a reliable recall foundation before she hits the teenage phase around five to six months.

Keep sessions short and very frequent — two to three minutes, five or six times a day is better than one long session. At 10 weeks her concentration window is tiny, so you want to stop while she's still keen and succeeding, not when she's switched off. Call her name, reward the moment she moves toward you, big celebration when she arrives. Don't practise recall when you're about to do something she won't enjoy — bath, crate, end of playtime — or she'll start weighing up whether coming back is worth it. Always make arriving at you the best thing that happened in her day.

You're set up well. The fact you're doing this at 10 weeks rather than trying to fix a broken recall at 18 months makes a huge difference with Vizslas. Stick with it consistently through the next few months and you'll have a dog that genuinely wants to come back to you.