Arnie has a decent retrieve now, goes after most dummies and brings them back. He doesn't play keep away either, which is good. He does drop the dummy at my feet, or close to my feet though. How can I make him return it to my hand?
I was starting from scratch and used this http://totallygundogs.com/clicker-trained-retrieve/ quite successfully.
Back chain it is one way so begin from the desired end point so he gets used to the dummy being in his mouth and in your hand at the same time. The other option is that I taught both my dogs a hand touch and used the same cue of a flat hand out during the retrieve.
What worked best for us with Odin was to walk backwards when he is returning with the dummy and take it from him while walking. Lots of praise of course for every to hand delivery. We also trained a "hold" command which was very useful later when we proceded to water retrieves(spit and shake problem is a lot easier to manage when you got a well trained hold command)
Watching the video, I did wonder whether you should work a bit more on building desire to retrieve? It's obviously a balance, because you don't want them crazy about retrieving (my older dog is, and that's a bit of a disaster as far as doing sensible things is concerned) - and it's a good thing to have a calm, sensible dog where you have to build up desire (so don't think I'm saying anything negative about Arnie here, I'm not at all). Arnie is looking away from the retrieve without being cued to do so, and is not exactly super fast going out and coming back. If this was my puppy, I wouldn't be asking for any steadiness before I had a more enthusiastic retrieve going.
Also, the other thing is if you look carefully at 20 seconds, it looks like he is moving away from the hand that reaches for the dummy. You don't want this to develop into a dodge, and then moving away before he reaches the human that is going to take the dummy away. It would be better not to reach out for that dummy....if you don't have a hand delivery yet, that's fine, but taking the dummy out of his mouth won't help the hand delivery training.
I was thinking the same thing - not as a criticism, but just as a tip. Don't bend over and reach for the dummy, stand up straight with your hands behind your back or better still turn away from him until he is right up close to you.
Hi, new to this forum and we are certainly no experts but thought our experience might help, I had just the same problem and actually succeeded in making it worse to the extent that he would spit the dummy out further and further away, I was given various advice and nothing really helped - UNTIL, that is, I went to see Philippa Williams, 3 things she taught me, firstly as mentioned above teach the hold away from the retrieve, so in the evenings I would sit on the settee and exchange treats for holding things then moved to asking him to pick them up bring them to me and exchange for treats, only done in short bursts and kept light hearted and fun, I carried this on with anything he happened to pick up in the house, secondly only praise whilst the item is in the mouth (it seems obvious but my natural reaction was to praise him once it was in my hand) and thirdly once combining it with a proper retrieve a phrase she said whilst observing me 'Go for the dog not the item' - I was so obssessed about not letting him drop the item I was going straight for it, has stuck in my mind ever since, so now I go to stroke him under the chin or side of the neck as he comes in if his head looks like dropping.. The result he is now 99% with every delivery and improving every day, I can even ask for a sit now and he still holds. Oh and she also taught me not to panic if he spits it again when learning something new it's a natural reaction to a new challenge - she is right of course he only ever does it once. I have obviously learnt so much more from my lessons but that was one of our first problems tackled.
Ha ha ha, very good advice from her also, one which I also never forget - and believe you me with my boy I've needed to partake many times
Good tips there. The other one I'd add is don't bother asking your dog to pick up a retrieve he has dropped on approaching you. Because if you reward this, you are just building an error chain, and if you don't reward it you are messing with your hand delivery training. So if you haven't got a hand delivery, and are working on the out and back of the retrieve chain, just reward the dog being near you with the dummy.
Yeah guys, I know what you're saying. He was looking away because I was distracting him making the video. And he's slow because we were at the end of a session. He was a bit buggered. I appreciate all the feedback. It's still early days tho. We will work on getting it stronger and better. We only started this at the start of the week. So this is how far we've come
Honestly, you've done really well. The guys here aren't being negative, they're giving you ideas of how to make it better. They've helped me enormously, so please don't take it as criticism, it's just "where to go next". It's great that you're even wanting to learn to do this, so everyone just wants to help. Keep on trucking, take all the advice on board, and you two will make an amazing team
Loving all the input, we're probably at a similar stage to Arnie, but we don't practice retrieves often. I'm stashing everyone's suggestions for our training too.
Goodness, I do hope you didn't take any of our comments as negative criticism, you're doing brilliantly! One more thing though (), do keep the sessions short and stop while he's keen and still wanting to do more. He's a lovely boy!
I didn't take it as negative, I understand what this is all about. I really do appreciate all the comments. Didn't mean for it to come across as I thought it was negative. We are working hard, but it is early days too. So it's all a little loose and free form and no pressure.
