# Fetch and give?



## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

Sophy had very little interest in Fetch - it seemed to worry the Puppy Class instructors no end! I rather accepted that it simply is not her idea of fun, and worked to find out what she does enjoy - play wrestling, hunt the hidden toy, and - after lots of revving up - tug. From Tug to picking the toy up from a few inches away was an easy transition. She will now chase it across the room and bring it back to the rug - IF we are playing with the right toy (Grubby Mouse) in the right place (sitting room rug) at the right time (after her supper). It's not important to me - in fact I would rather not have a Fetch fiend - so I have not trained for it, but if you have not tried Tug it may be another way in. Not the usual idea, I know, as it can teach the dog to hold on rather than drop or give, but it sounds as if that is not where your problem lies!


----------



## msminnamouse (Nov 4, 2010)

Yeah, she's not big on tug either. She won't make it easy on me.

I like teaching a lot of different skills, even the not so fun ones. I feel that it builds confidences, enriches the mind, instils some self discipline, and betters our bond. But I don't think it's that she doesn't like it, just that she doesn't seem to understand.


----------



## sarahmurphy (Mar 22, 2012)

My husband taught Spike to "Fetch" on the first day we had him (8 weeks), so I have no advice on teaching it,but...

It's almost a year, and he's up to about 2 hours a day of it... 

There is that whole "Be careful what you wish for" aspect to consider....

What if you do manage to teach your dog to fetch, and then you have to devote a good 2 hours every day to throwing a filthy tennis ball? (I mention the filthy tennis ball because it's the very best one! - the one that's covered in slobber, goo, dirt, whatever... around here, it's even better if it's really covered in mud and has been in the river at least a few times...!) We had a poodle play date here - both dogs love fetch, both dogs only wanted the one filthy ball... 

Oh, and poodles are so smart they will learn from each other - Poodle friend drops the ball at the throwers feet - our dog has to put it in your hand. The minute poodle friend left, our dog tries the whole "Tossing it at your feet and running to catch again" thing - it did not really pan out for him, but he tried what he saw working for "others". 

Thinking about that, is there anyone near you with a fetch crazy poodle you could have a play date with, using the "Brooklyn Bridge" theory? (If everyone else jumped off it, would you? - apparently, if they are all poodles, the answer might be a resounding "Splash"!)... 

sarah


----------



## CT Girl (Nov 17, 2010)

My guess is that she "gets" it but does not want to get it. My Aussie, a very smart dog, understood the game but it bored him. I got him up to fetching a ball or toy about 3 times before he would just stop. He would continue if I made him (even those first 3 were to placate Mommy) but he just was not into it. There are so many other things you can do with your dog. I would pick something you both enjoy. 

You can get her to take and hold but your timing needs to be spot on. In that split second she has the dumbell or whatever click and reward and just build up from there. I did not need to do this with Swizzle. He enjoys fetch and will drop the toy right in my hand and he will hold and release other things without an issue too but I did do this with my Aussie as I wanted him to hold a dumbell for class. As FJM points out it is not all bad. You wont have a ball obsessed dog which can be irritating.


----------



## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

I have two ball obsessed dogs, although Lily is the deeper devotee of balls and fetching. She is absolutely showing her retriever roots in her worship of the ball. It can be annoying. We have to check before dogs come in that they aren't sneaking in balls. If balls are in the house they want them thrown in the house.

When Lily was little she was very mouthy and possessive over getting balls away from her. It was unpleasant. I have been able to channel her love of the ball into excellent retrieve on flat and retrieve over jump for open obedience, but I could wish she was a little less driven by the ball lord. 

Unless you plan to do obedience and need the retrieve, just find stuff your dog likes and accept that some things don't do it for her.


----------



## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

Sarah - having known ball-obsessed dogs, that is rather why I didn't bother trying to teach mine to play it! I've often thought that the Legend of the Old Man of the Sea should be transposed to throwing a ball for a Border Collie! I see so many dogs out and about who are so rivetted on the ball that they take no pleasure in all the sights and smells and experiences around them - bit like owners who spend their whole time texting or talking on their phones.

Poppy once did a perfect, text book retrieve. She was only a puppy, and the dogs found a very sick baby rabbit, in the final stages of Mixy. I could not steel myself to kill it, so put it in a dry, shady spot and called the dogs away. Poppy waited until we had gone several hundred yards, then doubled back, got the rabbit, and brought it to drop into my hand. My rather unconvincing attempts at seeming pleased may be why she has never bothered much with retrieving ever since!


----------



## tortoise (Feb 5, 2012)

Many poodles do not have a "hard bite" and need to be taught how to hang on to a toy to play tug. I was getting frustrated with my puppy's seeming lack of progress and the tedium of training it so I see up my 5 year old son to teach it. A couple months later I have a little tugging machine.


----------



## msminnamouse (Nov 4, 2010)

She's much to lazy to become ball obsessed. She did have a stage when she was younger where she was into balls but it was just biting the heck out of them and throwing them herself. Sometimes she would bring them to us (and I wish I had trained for it then!!) but it was only once in a while. Never obsessively or all that often. 

She's a service dog and this would be a good skill for her to have. I don't think that she dislikes it. I still don't think that I'm communicating correctly with her. If I make the behavior reinforcing enough, then she wouldn't have a problem doing it if it becomes worth it to her. That's why she holds down and stays for long periods of time, why she heels, and other not so fun things but good skills to have. The pay off makes it worth it even if it's not the most fun thing in the world to do.


----------



## tortoise (Feb 5, 2012)

Ahhh.... service dog tug and retrieve are taught differently that tug and retrieve for obedience and motivation in training.

Too much enthusiasm in a service dog tug and retreive results in spastic, incomplete behaviors and property destruction. :lol:

Google "tug for treat". It's popular for training non-toy-motivated service dogs to tug. Practice on straight line tugging (imagine how a dog would need to tug to open a door).

For the retreive, try clicker training it. Google this too or get the book "Quick Clicks" which has an EXCELLENT how-to section on it. You can get a nice retrieve that doesn't damage items with this method. 

Be aware that once your dog learns that it's good to put a variety of things in its mouth, it will go through a chewing phase until it learns that it can only put items in its mouth when you ask for it.

I've found it's best to start with a favorite toy for retrieval. Most dogs are very receptive to retrieving water bottles (empty) and pens. These are the first items I train.


----------



## msminnamouse (Nov 4, 2010)

I don't think that this will help. She knows to take something but she doesn't hold it long enough to tug or anything else. She takes it and promptly drops it. That's why I'm having trouble teaching her to retrieve and give. Tug needs the dog taking something and not immediately dropping it.

She's very willing to grab and drop almost anything I hold out to her or tilt up on the floor, but not anything lying by it's self on the floor. But that's the problem. She grabs and then drops very quickly. Every single time so I can't even reinforce longer and longer holds because they don't even happen.


----------



## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

Is she clicker trained? Perhaps she would respond better to shaping the pick up and retrieve?


----------



## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Since I had (retrospectively regretfully) taught Lily to put balls down when she brought them to me as a puppy, I had a very hard time getting a reliable dumbbell retrieve. She was dropping it 100% of the time on the way back to me. In other words I had no approximation of what I wanted to use to shape it. I ended up using take, hold, give. It is coercive at the outset, but worked quickly for me and I now have a wildly happy and reliable retriever. 

Sit with the dog sitting facing you. Open the dogs mouth and put object in mouth. Say good hold and give pets under chin. Take it away quickly and treat. Do 2 or 3 sessions per day. Repeat 5 times per session with each "hold" a tiny bit longer. As you get longer holds, put object against dogs lips to get it to open mouth and accept object. Once the dog will open mouth to take object from against mouth, start to move object away but in front of dogs face so they reach little distances for object. As you increase distance dog is reaching also lower object towards floor. Eventually the dog will be picking up the object off the floor. You must always say take when asking the dog to put the object in her mouth. That will be the final command to pick things up. You must always say give to get the dog to release the object. That will be the final command to give the object to you in your hand. Eventually you get rid of the word hold in the middle. Be really gentle but firm and be generous with treats at the beginning of each higher level ask.

Let us know if this helps.


----------



## georgiapeach (Oct 9, 2009)

Potsie does not fetch - period... He watches my other two dogs happily play it, but has absolutely no inclination to do it himself. Oh well...


----------



## Sookster (Apr 11, 2011)

I recently taught a very non toy motivated poodle to do a retrieve for service work. It can be done, it just has to be done VERY slowly. Rather than a clicker, because it's hard to juggle holding an object, treats, and a clicker at the same time, I conditioned a marker work "yes" to mark the things I liked. 

I started with a toy that she was mildly interested in (a bone, in her case) and rewarded her for putting her mouth on it. At the beginning, I was accepting licks, but quickly shaped up to mouth actually around the toy. The key here is *I was still holding the toy for her at this point* then I started asking for more pressure in the grip, then slightly longer grips. 

I also should point out that during this time period, I'm only rewarding when she's gripping the toy directly in front of me with my hand on the toy. This begins conditioning for returning a toy to hand directly in front of you. Once I had the grip, I actually skipped trying to get her to hold it in front of me and moved to holding the toy away from my body slightly out to the side. Since she had been conditioned that she only got the treat when the toy was right in front of me and in my hand, she took it from me and moved it to the position where she had previously been rewarded, then dropped it into my hand. This was a big leap, but it clicked with her. 

Where a lot of dogs get hung up is in the "moving away" part. Logically, if the treats are in your hand or near you, why would they move farther away to gain the treat? You have to teach them that this is what is required to get the treat in the end. That's why I start with holding the toy in my hand slightly away from the position where I had previously been holding it for her to grab and slowly move it further and further from me body until it's a whole arm's length out. At that time, I start moving it lower and lower toward the ground, eventually dropping it and rewarding like crazy when the dog picks it up. 

Once she was picking up the dropped toy off the ground and returning it to hand, I moved to a short PVC pipe "stick", then conditioned her to household items such as brushes, pens, etc. Here's a video of the end result (this also has tugging on it). 

Maddie Learns to be Helpful - YouTube

Maybe this is helpful. This sort of training can take a lot of patience. It took me 4 weeks of 4-5 training sessions daily to get the results that you see in the video, since this poodle had absolutely NO retrieve drive or any desire to put anything into her mouth. I had to slowly teach that, then build the retrieves. I would say I spent a solid week and a half on simply getting her to put her mouth on the toy on command, consistently. The method I used is some semblance of backchaining: teaching the last behavior in the series of behaviors first. In this case, the delivery to hand directly in front of me is the last behavior, so I taught that first, then taught returning it to hand from slightly further away, then from close by on the floor, and finally when tossed several feet away.


----------



## msminnamouse (Nov 4, 2010)

I know it's not her, it's me. She picked up a new trick today (Tapping with her paws) in less than five minutes so obviously, I'm just not communicating clearly. She's willing to learn so she's motivated, but I just don't know how to teach her. 

I've use clickers every so often but I'm not a big fan. I like a verbal marker better and I haven't seen any worse results. Behaviorists aren't fans of clickers. I recently learned why. It signals a response in the Amygdala, where the fight or flight responses are. So you can trigger a fight or flight response. This is what I've been told and I don't know if it's true but it makes me think. I'll have to see if I can recover any papers on this. 

That's not the case with Ginger but she prefers a verbal marker because my voice is warm and pleased. The clicker is clinical and mechanical and some dogs prefer it and I'd use it for them but if a dog prefers verbal, then it's what I use. I'm very concise and quick with my verbal markers. 

Just FYI. Everyone is free to use what they like. But if you mean clicker trained as in marker trained (hard to tell which people mean sometimes!), then she's clicker trained. 

I can't shape a behavior that she's not even offering for me to shape. She won't pick it up off the ground at all so I can't shape her lifting it more and more. She won't retrieve so I can't shape that either.

Lily, I don't believe in using any coercion at all but I can work with what Ginger has been taught to voluntarily offer me. She will take something if I ask her to "Take it". This was easily accomplished with teasing her with something she wanted. I'll keep a hold of it with one hand and stroke the bottom of her chin with the other. If it feels good enough, or just confuses her or distracts her for a minute from promptly dropping it, then we can work on hold. I hope it works. 

I've got the beginning and the end done. I dunno what they call that. Eclectic chaining? Lol. She takes it, and she drops it on cue. Now I've got to get her to hold it and place it in my hand, and to pick it up off the ground and place it in my hand. 

I know she's be wildly proud of herself when she learns this and will want to show it off to the family, just like she does with all her other tricks.

Sookster,


> then I started asking for more pressure in the grip, then slightly longer grips.


How did you accomplish this? Today I experimented by teasing her to get her drive up and tugged gently on a chew but she didn't offer much resistance at all. I may even have imagined the slightest resistance I thought I felt. Sigh. She's too good. She's like, _Oh. You want this? Okay!_

THANK you for the video link. Watching it be taught will probably help me more than a description will. I get confused easily.

I *think* I have an idea for teaching tug also. Get a rag, dip it in broth, squeeze and attach to something. Reward her for grabbing it, then reward more enthusiastic tugging/grabbing. I'll have to experiment and see how it goes.

My friend taught her SD to pull down her shirt zipper by attaching a tiny little stuffed Kong to it!


----------



## Arcticfox (Dec 12, 2011)

I've heard from many different sources that mechanical sounds work much better as markers than a verbal mark. And so far in my brief experience with Tesla it seems to be true. I've tried teaching her new tricks with both clicker and verbal marker and she "gets it" much faster with the clicker. The verbal marker is great for rehearsing learned behaviours and distraction proofing, but we now use the clicker for all new commands.

Here's an article by Karen Pryor on click vs voice, and a related master's thesis on the same topic. While it was a study - it unfortunately has very few data points (only 10 dogs), but it does support the idea that clicks are more effective than voice as a marker. 

One of the proposed mechanisms for this is that trainers tend to have better timing with the clicker than their own voice, which makes sense to me, but that is something that can be improved with practice, and by filming yourself to rewatch the training process.


----------



## msminnamouse (Nov 4, 2010)

I'm aware of what Karen Pryor says and it's a very small sampling of dogs, but thanks for posting it. I'm the same with verbal markers as I am with clickers. Ginger prefers verbal so I'll stick with that. Some dogs prefer clickers and some prefer verbals. I don't see any faster learning one way or the other unless the particular dog prefers one over the other.

I was discussing it with some behaviorists a little while ago and they told me that they have a lot of people coming in with the problem that their dogs are afraid of clickers. And that the clients tried all kinds of things to get them used to it. Buying special clickers, using pens, muffling it with socks, etc. Anything you can think of. So what do the behaviorists tell them? Stop using a clicker. And the client's answer is, But everyone is telling me to use a clicker. 

A clear, concise, unique marker is what really counts. Something that stands out. I use a special tone of voice and pitch that suffices, that I designate just for marking.

I figured out what the problem is regarding my training. I wasn't thinking very clearly. She has part of it down with chunks missing in the middle and at the end. She'll pick up chews off the ground so we can to reinforce that and build to non-chew items. She's willing to take anything from my hand, chew or not. She drops on cue. But she doesn't know to drop into my hand. She also doesn't know "hold it". That's the main chunk we're missing. She needs to learn that skill so she can know to hold it until she gets to me to drop it into my hand. 

No wonder she doesn't get it. I confused the heck out of it and left out key parts.


----------



## thisle (Dec 29, 2012)

I too have a service dog who is trained to fetch and give. She is the same and had no natural inclination initially but after a week was doing great. I have her clicker trained, but I use my mouth to make a clicking sound rather than a clicker. 

Here were my steps....

Hold out object, dog sniffs and noses, click, treat 2-3 times. 
Hold out object, dog sniffs and noses - wait, dog licks, click, treat 2-3 times. 
Leave it and do something else for a while. 

Hold out object, dog licks, click, treat a few times. 
Hold out object, dog licks - wait - dog noses around a bit and then bites it, click treat 2-3 times. 
Leave it and do something else for a while. 

Hold out object, dog bites it, click treat a few times. 
Put object on the ground. If the dog noses or bites or interacts with it at all, click, treat. 
Poke the object a bit and move it around, dog mouths it, click, treat. 
Dog gets a toy or a special reward and do something else for a while. 

Come back to it and work the dog back to mouthing it on the ground and then wait for it to grasp it, click, treat. 

It took 2-3 days of this, going back to the beginning at the start of most training sessions and just holding out the object, dog grasps it, click and treat. I then worked back up and took it one step farther each time and then gave a super special reward. 

Now my dog can pick up anything, even a credit card off a tile floor, and hand it to me. I had to break it down into incredibly small steps though initially.


----------



## msminnamouse (Nov 4, 2010)

Thank you! I have your's and a couple of other game plans now to teach it. I just need to get the energy to do it.


----------

