Retrieving to Hand 2/24/20

​Today I had a good conversation with one of our hunters about their dog always dropping the bird.  He asked how I feel about force training a dog to retrieve.  My personal opinion is I don’t force train my dogs because I feel if I have to make a dog retrieve then its no fun for them.  I have seen a lot of dogs in my career that were forced train and they totally gave up on retrieving.  My idea of training dogs to hold and retrieve is to work with them when they are little.
The key to making this work is to be able to read your dog.  When I start using pheasant wings with my puppies, I never let them run off and chew them or eat them.  If I let them do that then I taught them its ok to run off with my bird, dummy, or ball and either chew it up or eat it.  Teaching a puppy, a good habit is easy but to un-train a bad habit takes twice as long.  So, by starting off at 8 weeks you can teach your puppy to bring the wing back to you. 
Now when your puppy starts getting around the 4 to 7 months old then you need to start watching for them to start teething.  If you notice your puppy chewing and see blood in their month its most likely they are teething.  When this starts, I usually hold off on retrieving because I don’t want them to learn any bad habits.  Usually when a puppy is teething you will see them go out and try to pick up whatever you throw, and they will drop it and then pick it up again and drop it again.  They do this because it hurts to retrieve and its uncomfortable.  This is usually when the bad habit starts because the puppy gets so used to dropping it and picking it up and dropping it again that it becomes a habit.  So, what I do is hold off on the retrieving until they are done with teething.  Usually at this time I will work on re-enforcing their obedience or work on e-collar conditioning them.
If you have a puppy that absolutely won’t hold what you throw, then I would stop throwing things for them. I would start teaching them what hold means.  To teach this I use a bucket and sit on it and have my dog sit on the floor in between my legs.  I will take a dummy and put it in their mouth.  As I’m doing this, I say fetch and when the dummy is in their mouth, I say hold.  Once your puppy stops fighting with you then I say drop. I wait till they release and give it to me because I don’t want this to be a tug of war match because in the end it becomes a bad habit.  After a few days of doing this your puppy will start holding until you say drop.  When they get really good at holding then its time to teach them that they can hold and walk at the same time.  I usually say they need to learn how to walk and chew bubble gum. 
After awhile you can throw a dummy or a bird and when your puppy runs out there to pick it up you can say fetch it up and once they fetch it say hold.  Your puppy should know the commands and figure it out.  If they don’t then take a step back and go back to making them hold and heel with it.  Not all dogs learn at the same speed, so you need to be able to read your dog and understand where they are at in the process.
For me using force or pressure is not for me to make my dog retrieve.  I like to use positive training to get a dog to learn.  It makes training your dog so much more fun!


If you have any questions on this topic, please feel to reach out and ask.  If you have any other training questions or product questions, please don’t be afraid to ask!
julie@goldmeadows.com