Teaching "Take It" the Fun Way!

I keep watching and reading about the "ear pinch" method of teaching a dog to retrieve, or to hold something in their mouths, and what I've read and seen, and the pain caused to the dog just makes my jaw drop! There are much better and more fun methods to teach something like that. I am trying out one of them right now with Shippo. Here is how it goes:

Take a nice sturdy toy, like a rope toy or plushie, and tempt the dog to mouth it. When he puts his mouth on the toy, click and treat. Shippo got this after the first click! He tilted his head, as if to say, "You mean all I have to do is put my mouth on my favorite toy, and you feed me?! Cool deal!" We repeated this several times in a 5 minute session.

Next, when the dog knows he's supposed to put his mouth on the toy, you'll connect a cue to it, like "Take," "Take it," "Hold," etc. Repeat. Then you would start rewarding longer and longer instances of the dog having his mouth on the toy, and eventually, progress to letting go of the toy.

I will be editing this into a real article with more detail once I am done teaching Shippo "Take It."

All articles on this blog are written by Victoria Steen unless otherwise stated. They are NOT to be redistributed.