I hope I'm not repeating what you've already heard. I find that a lot of people, even professional trainers, come at the retrieve in a manner I, as a bird dog trainer, would consider backwards. I don't teach dogs to chase after a toy, I don't click for going out to target an item, I start with "take" and we do "take" on many things before they ever pick things off the ground. It stops the "can't catch me" because you don't let go off the item for several weeks/months depending on the dog, and you're always praising for releasing the item as much or more as their taking the item.
One professional I know with Rottweilers withheld food for five days (always willing to use kibble as a reward for retrieving, dog would not retrieve) before her dog finally stopped resisting taking random items. Not saying you should take it that far, just mentioning it because you're not the only one hitting a wall on ways to motivate a dog that isn't naturally a motivated retriever.
With Duncan, I started with a wooden dowel, and rolled it into his mouth while saying "take". Didn't wait for him to open his mouth, just opened his mouth, rolled it in, then praised and fussed over him (praise driven dog). He wasn't sure what to make of it at first. We did 20 reps, three times a day, for a week. By the end of the week, he was happy to see the dowel because it meant happy fun time. Then I started putting it just in front of his mouth and waited, and when he reached for it (eventually, out of boredom) threw a party. Slowly, adding an inch every few days, I increased the reach. Once he was doing a foot long reach, I started adding in other items. Metal, leather, cloth, plastic, anything I could think of, one at a time, back at the "roll it into his mouth and reward" step. Things progressed quicker with each new category, and I was still extending the reach on the dowel until I could chuck it as far as I could and he'd race out and get it.
If you've already started with this end of things and he's still not bringing things back to hand for the "give" after thousands of reps (yes, over the weeks, it adds up), you might do a two-equal-toy method: You've always got what he's got, so once he has #1, you shake #2 so it's better, and he only gets #2 when he brings #1 close. Then you swap and make a fuss out of the "new" #1 you've got, which is now the Best Toy.
I've seen a lot of bird dogs, of all sorts of natural retrieving drive, go through a lot of different types of training, and I think most dogs can be taught to retrieve, if you break the steps down small enough. Too many people think of it as two parts- go get it, bring it back- when there's all sorts of steps in between (hence asking what part Guinness didn't like). Some dogs don't like picking it up off the floor, so you do a lot of jackpot work on that. Some don't like giving it up (which seems to be his issue), but that's a matter of going back to the take-hold-give where your hand is always also on the item (or you've got fishing line tied to it) so they can't do the "I'm IT, come get me!" game.
And if I'm being an overbearing bore on this or any other subject, tell me. I'm trying to be helpful, but sometimes my attempts at "helpful" end up being "rude steamroller". What I lack in social graces, I tend to make up for in knowledge.
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Date: 2010-04-22 06:20 am (UTC)One professional I know with Rottweilers withheld food for five days (always willing to use kibble as a reward for retrieving, dog would not retrieve) before her dog finally stopped resisting taking random items. Not saying you should take it that far, just mentioning it because you're not the only one hitting a wall on ways to motivate a dog that isn't naturally a motivated retriever.
With Duncan, I started with a wooden dowel, and rolled it into his mouth while saying "take". Didn't wait for him to open his mouth, just opened his mouth, rolled it in, then praised and fussed over him (praise driven dog). He wasn't sure what to make of it at first. We did 20 reps, three times a day, for a week. By the end of the week, he was happy to see the dowel because it meant happy fun time. Then I started putting it just in front of his mouth and waited, and when he reached for it (eventually, out of boredom) threw a party. Slowly, adding an inch every few days, I increased the reach. Once he was doing a foot long reach, I started adding in other items. Metal, leather, cloth, plastic, anything I could think of, one at a time, back at the "roll it into his mouth and reward" step. Things progressed quicker with each new category, and I was still extending the reach on the dowel until I could chuck it as far as I could and he'd race out and get it.
If you've already started with this end of things and he's still not bringing things back to hand for the "give" after thousands of reps (yes, over the weeks, it adds up), you might do a two-equal-toy method: You've always got what he's got, so once he has #1, you shake #2 so it's better, and he only gets #2 when he brings #1 close. Then you swap and make a fuss out of the "new" #1 you've got, which is now the Best Toy.
I've seen a lot of bird dogs, of all sorts of natural retrieving drive, go through a lot of different types of training, and I think most dogs can be taught to retrieve, if you break the steps down small enough. Too many people think of it as two parts- go get it, bring it back- when there's all sorts of steps in between (hence asking what part Guinness didn't like). Some dogs don't like picking it up off the floor, so you do a lot of jackpot work on that. Some don't like giving it up (which seems to be his issue), but that's a matter of going back to the take-hold-give where your hand is always also on the item (or you've got fishing line tied to it) so they can't do the "I'm IT, come get me!" game.
And if I'm being an overbearing bore on this or any other subject, tell me. I'm trying to be helpful, but sometimes my attempts at "helpful" end up being "rude steamroller". What I lack in social graces, I tend to make up for in knowledge.