Hi everyone, I am having real trouble with Darcey and her Auntie Cinders (4), the both of them have found dead things in the park in the last couple of days ( pigeons and a rabbit), they just will not let them go and Im running around trying to catch hold of them while people are walking past and laughing about it :-[ :-[ and I end up in tears, has anyone else had this or can anyone help thanks susannah Darcey and Cinders
Re: Trouble with getting things out of mouth For things that are not so valuable, that is, not food, then teaching a "hand it over" or "drop" is the thing to do. When the dog has something it might view as food, or incredibly high value, that it wants to keep very badly then a magic word is helpful: http://www.thelabradorsite.com/your-labradors-magic-word/ That is about all you can do, really.
Re: Trouble with getting things out of mouth The word 'swop' is very useful, just offer a very high value treat and say 'swop', works very well with a Lab I know who picks up all manner of nasty things. I managed to get a Muntjac bone out of her mouth, just by saying 'swop', had done the swopping with her at other times. Her owner was chasing her and she was playing 'keep away' when I used the magic word 'swop' and hey presto, bone was dropped ;D
Re: Trouble with getting things out of mouth Always carry a very high value treat, Bouncers favorite is dried spratts. When he gets hold of somthing he shouldnt do I "spratt" him & he lets go. After a while they should associate the "drop" word ( or whatere you use ) with deliciosness & hopefully let go without having to recieve a treat.
Re: Trouble with getting things out of mouth It's really hard to get a dog to drop an open carcass or something he sees as a high value food item once it is actually in his mouth using a drop cue...and I'd have thought pretty impossible as a bribed swap...I'm always a little surprised to hear people say it works (it often comes up on such threads as this)....It'll work for lesser things, but not for something the dog genuinely sees as food. Are people really having success with this? :-\
Re: Trouble with getting things out of mouth I have no expertise in this area as my pup is so well behaved he wouldn't touch anything so disgusting cough cough (leg of lamb) and today Rolo discovered a nice pile of dog vomit I tried everything to get him away from it and it showed me that my eureka magic word is not charged enough yet.
Re: Trouble with getting things out of mouth It works for me with my friend's dog. She had found a dead, baby Muntjac and had disappeared, we eventually found her and she played keep away from her owner, crunching the bones and barking at him if he tried to get near her. Eventually we walked off with my dogs and she followed but kept 10ft away from us if we stopped. She was really scrunching a leg bone and not managing to swallow it, so I just said 'swap' and she dropped the bone and came for the treat I had done this 'swap' with her on lesser things and it worked beautifully.
Re: Trouble with getting things out of mouth If the found object is fairly boring (like a dry bone with no meat) then our 'give' cue does work. With high value things like dead animals I've considered it an achievement to get close enough to grab the dog, open its mouth with my hands and then point head at ground to cause said bounty to fall out. Then I stuff my dog's face with treats, put the lead on and exit the scene. If the found object is something I just can't bear to touch but is not especially dangerous (like, not a cooked chook) then I count it as a loss and just let him have it whilst trying not to spew.
Re: Trouble with getting things out of mouth i'm similar to Rachael. I can imagine Charlie giving me a dead animal at the end of a "fetch" string but only because of the circumstances around that, and the amount of time that would have gone into it, ie I would have trained with a dead animal by transitioning onto dead game in a gradual way. Unless I did the same in the circumstances of Charlie finding a prize he viewed as food, ie trained him to hand over food in those circumstances, he wouldn't. He will hand over the things I've trained for, which is just about everything else. A bribe wouldn't work unless what I had was of a higher value than what he had. My magic word has so far worked for a rotting seagull and the smelliest rotting fish ever. I'm not sure he viewed these as food, but was certainly beyond delighted by the smell. :
Re: Trouble with getting things out of mouth We have got this one so wrong! Homer loves to pick up any socks or washing or shoes, the roll of toilet paper and my slippers are special treats. He will pick them up upstairs but will not give, he will chase around the house then go to the kitchen and wait by his treat box. Outside on the common he is better and I can usually distract him with his ball. But he is not very good at giving up his ball especially if there are other dogs around. He once picked up a half decomposed skeleton of some sort of water bird it was difficult for him to carry, so eventually he dropped it to chase his ball. :-X
