The trick is to crouch down, raise your pitch a little, and call them to you. If your dog's not too excited they'll come over without much fuss. It also helps if you have a treat on hand.
If your dog is ever running and you can't catch them act hurt. Pretend to fall and hurt your knee. Most likely it will come back and check on you and you grab it, unless it's playing with something else then good luck
My boy has since passed on, but he would never consider leaving us. So we just let him off the leash on the trails. Whenever we heard people ahead of us we'd call him back and put him back on the leash until they were out of earshot again. It never caused any problems in the 12 years he was with us. Such a precious, beautiful boy.
Same with mine. When he was new to us, he ran away twice so I put him on a leash strictly and put a GPS tracker on him. Thought he just wasn't one of those off the leash dogs. A year later a friend of mine told me "just cut him loose". I told him he runs, he looked at the dog and said "nah. He isn't going to. Try it."
Was hectars and hectars of his private forest, so I thought "what the hell, we'll find him with the tracker when he's hungry" and massive surprise: He really never ran off. Not that day and never since. 20m ahead, 20m back, never have to worry, as soon as people can be heard or he loses sight of me he's by my side immediately.
I wish he was good enough for that but he believes he's a hunting dog and if he smells deer scent he's gone... He event managed to dig out a portridge once! He picked up the scent, stopped listening to us and 30 seconds later bam, bird came out of hiding 10m from us and our dog came back as if nothing happened.
Of course, dogs have many varied dialects, but these are the kinds of things I see dogs saying to each other:
Butt sniff = "I am meeting you! Can I meet you?" This may receive a snarl and snap and bared teeth response, which usually means "I'm not comfortable around new dogs because I have dogtism, give me a minute."
Biting and snarling at another dog's neck while the tail is wagging = "WE ARE PLAYING! THIS IS FUN!"
Barking at dogs which are play biting at each other's necks = "Are you okay? I think you're okay, but I'm not sure, because I'm only a dog."
Dogs also code switch between talking to other dogs and talking to humans. Furthermore, when dogs talk to humans, they generally tailor their vocabulary specifically to the people who they interact with most.
Laying on the back or side and making a "face swipe" pantomime with one paw to their own face = "It is time to pet me."
Going straight to the front door and sitting at noon or 9PM = "It is time for my nap or bedtime. You will let me outside in front to go potty, after which I will eagerly run in, straight into my crate, and wait for my cookies."
Stopping and looking back at you after you let him out the back door = "Are you going to come out? I really want you to come out and play frisbee."
