Sabrina the teenage... female dog

Retrieve

Mom typed this up about how she trained me to retrieve, and I thought I should share....


Sabrina was NOT into fetching things at all. I used this method to get her to get things when she was about 3-4 years old.

Start with something easy to hold-- I like to use a cloth hankie or a cloth glove for Sabrina. For Ollie I used a wool beanie-style hat. You could also use a mismatched sock or anything soft and easy to pick up. This method relies on clicker training. I think that it would be easiest to teach this using clicker training as you really want to mark the exact second that the dog does the right thing and it is much easier to do this with a clicker. However, if you don't want to use a clicker, you could use vocal markers (like "yes") to mark the correct behavior. Just make sure your markers are spot on!

Drop the item on the floor, and when your dog shows even the slightest interest in this item, click (or use your vocal marker) and treat. For some dogs this may be as little as just glancing at the dropped item. Other dogs might go over to investigate right away. Start wherever your dog is comfortable starting-- I'll describe for a dog that is really not interested, but if your dog starts out further along in the process that's great.

So anyway, click and treat when they look at the dropped item. Pick it up, do it again. Click and treat for looking at the item 5-10 times. Note, do NOT introduce a vocal command for this until I say so later on, you want them to know what the end desired behavior is before you introduce a word. Next drop the item and require them to look at the item and take a step towards it, click and treat. Repeat 5-10 times.

Keep training sessions short and sweet, about 5-10 minutes. Stop after 5-10 minutes, even if you are still at just looking at the item! When you start a new training session you may find you need to move back a step or two in the sequence, but you can quickly move forward with only 1-2 repetitions at each step.

Shape the desired behavior by requiring more out of your dog each time. Require 5-10 reps of them looking and taking 2 steps, then 3, then coming over to the item as close as they can get, remembering to click/treat when they've completed what you wanted at each level. Then do 5-10 reps of requiring them to come over to the dropped item and put their nose near it to click/treat. Next you want them to somehow open their mouth over the item. Some dogs may go right to picking the item up. Others might require some shaping along the way-- click and treat when they have their mouth open near the item, then gradually click treat for mouth open and on the item etc. This is usually the slowest step if you have a dog that is not into taking things in their mouth, but if you use really high value treats and the shaping method, going in baby steps towards the correct behavior, you will get it eventually (this is what I had to do with Sabrina).

So now you're at the point where you are click/treating for your dog taking the item into their mouth, even for a milisecond. Next start delaying the click/treat. They pick up the item, wait 2 miliseconds to click/treat. Repeat. Then a half second, then a second etc. The idea is you want them to learn to calmly hold the item when they've picked it up.

Finally require them to hold the item in their mouth and come to you to get click/treat. Do this by first requiring them to come near to you, then requiring them to touch your hand with the item to get the click/treat. Then requiring them to let go of the item in your hand to get the click/treat.

Once your dog understands the whole sequence of events-- picking up the item, holding onto it while coming over to you, and putting it in your hand-- then you can introduce commands. Mine is "get it". I do not introduce commands for "hold it", and my "drop it" command I've already taught for other things and don't usually use it for this sequence. If you wanted to introduce these words at this time, that is fine, too. Now you are just naming the thing that your dog already understands. To introduce a vocal command, say the command right before the dog does the action. Do this many times, saying "get it" right as the dog goes to pick up the item in their mouth, slowly putting the vocal command earlier and earlier. You should be able to get to the point where if you say "get it" the dog looks for you to drop the object. At this time, introduce discrimination. Drop the object and give no reward for getting it if the dog does so without your verbal command. This prevents your dog from picking up every single thing you've dropped.

Once they are reliably getting it and everything with the item you've started with, now you work on other items. Try a different cloth object first. You will find you probably need to start out with early shaping just as you did with the first object. It should move a lot faster with the second object. Then do a third larger or heavier cloth item. Add in things like an empty makeup bag, a scarf etc that are still easy on the mouth but more difficult to carry. After a while, your dog will start to generalize the "get it" command to whatever item you drop.

Next introduce harder materials. Try plastic or wood next. Small pieces of PVC pipe make good dumbbells, or you can purchase some made for obedience. You'll have to go back to shaping for sure with this new material, but they'll pick up on it pretty quickly. Metal is the hardest material, it feels funny in their mouth, so leave it for last if you do it at all.

Once your dog is able to pick up a variety of objects, start training with the emergency phone (this is naming specific objects to get, so if you want to name other objects, use this method, just insert whatever other object you want to name-- for example I taught Sabrina "case" for my medicine case). By this point your dog will probably be willing to pick up the phone when you drop it. Do this a couple of times just to make sure your dog will get this phone in their mouth happily. If it is a cell phone, try a leather or cloth carrier to make it easier on your dog. If it is a cordless phone, consider attaching a rope or other easy to carry thing onto the phone so your dog has an easier time of it.

Now introduce a word for the phone. Drop the item, say "phone", then "get it". Repeat a bunch of times. Eventually your dog will realize you are using the word phone as the cue word. Slowly space out the two words (ie at first say them right after each other, then try waiting a second between each). Pretty soon your dog won't wait for "get it" anymore and will know this command as phone. Then place the phone on the floor (ie don't drop it, which has until now been a visual cue for the dog) and say "phone". Reward profusely when the dog gets it and brings it to you. Repeat 5-10 times. Slowly phase out the putting on the floor. Leave the phone on the floor in another room and go into the room together (this way seeing the phone is a new stimulus and helps trigger your dog that it should get the phone for you). Eventually just leave the phone on the ground for longer periods of time and ask for it throughout the day.

Once your dog is comfortable with this, you can start moving the phone to more complicated places-- on a nearby shelf or low coffee table, for example. If you have one of those puzzle toys and yoru dog knows how to get things out of the puzzle, try putting the phone in there. Then put the phone on top of your purse (if you keep the phone in your purse-- otherwise put it close to wherever you are going to keep it). If you are keeping it in your purse, you'll have to slowly shape taking the phone from the purse. So put it on the purse, then put it right under the flap of the purse so it is still sticking out for your dog to see and grasp, then put it right under the flap so they have to open the flap, then right at the top of the purse, then partially covered by one item etc etc.

Now that your dog can bring you the phone from anywhere, if you want, you can introduce one final aspect, which is another cue for phone. You want to keep the verbal "phone" cue, but there may be times when you can't speak and want your dog to get the phone for you. Fall to the floor like you are passing out, say phone, and reward when it is brought to you. If this startles your dog too much, you might try asking calmly for the phone while sitting on the ground or while reclining on the couch to get them used to you being in different posisions. Anyway, the idea is that just like you taught the new word "phone" instead of "get it", you will first do the dropping suddenly to the ground, then say the word "phone". Repeat a lot of times and your dog will associate the action of dropping to the ground with the command phone, and will start to bring the phone on their own when you drop to the ground.

Use the method outlined in the previous paragraph for any other type of cue training. I call an action cue a cue based on some action. Like you might want to train a dog to bring you medicine after they've had a chance to potty in the AM so they don't wake you up. Or you might want to train them to bring you something with an alarm as a reminder, or bring you meds if you are doing some sort of repetitive action or something. You can also train a time cue using the same method. At the same time every day practice getting the item, and give a huge reward (like a meal!). Your dog will soon associate getting the item with the meal, and will remind you at that time every day by bringing you the item.

All this sounds quite complicated and long from this very loooong email that I've typed out. However, if you spend 5-10 minutes on this every single day, your dog will have this down in just a month or two. This is how I trained Sabrina to bring me my medicine case. She went from a dog who refused to retrieve anything, who did NOT like picking things up in her mouth to excitedly bringing me my meds (I trained in a time and an action cue for the 2 med times a day) reliably in about 1.5 to 2 months.