Retrieve to hand

As requested I am going to show the start to finish process I used with Leo shaping him to retrieve the spoon to my hand, and then target it to a place. Today we will look at step one which is putting the object in his mouth and then moving it towards my hand.

If you watch the series on the foundations and the trick session for “putting your toys away” you can see how I did this with Nick. With Nick I did this process opposite of how I did it with Leo and that is because Nick came in with a very strong possessiveness and reluctance to let my hands near his mouth when he has a hold of something, so with him I taught the put the object someplace first and then made one of those places my hands in a sneaky way. With Leo I took the more traditional route I take with a dog that shares more easily. So know that you can do these things in different orders depending on what your dog offers you. In fact some dogs i’ve started right with the object on the ground instead of holding it like I did with both Leo & Nick as some dogs are worried about biting something that is in your hands. So when shaping don’t be afraid to experiment and shift things around to see if your dog responds better to something differently.

Step 1 - putting mouth on object

Step 2 - picking up object

So let’s see if you can get your dogs to pick something up! If they already pick up toys and deliver to your hand, try it with random objects!