Teaching a dog to hold something in its mouth...

...how do you do it?

I want to be able to ask roxie to take things from me and put them on the floor/give them to people. However at the moment the first challenge is getting her to hold things in her mouth for longer than a millisecond.

Am I going about this in the right way? at the moment im hold the object infront of her (i rubbed a bit of chicken on it so she would be interested to start with) and clicked when she put her mouth round it, now she will take it from me, hold it for a second and then drop it and i clicked just before she spat it out because i didnt want to reward her dropping it instead of holding it...

Does any of that make sense? Help! lol

Withold the click, if she drops it, encourage her to pick it up again and slowly build the time up before you click.

http://www.dogsey.com/showthread.php...light=retrieve

I don`t use a clicker. I tend to use toys that I and the dog can hold at the same time like tuggies and have a little play with them. That prolongs the hold.

Thanks guys, Am still stuck on getting her to hold it for any real length of time, she will close her jaw round it then spit it out no matter how much i try and encourage her

Thanks claire, will give that a go if I cant get her to do it this way

Just be careful, you do not get a hold and no leave/drop/out this way.........................

I did it with a clicker. First clicked for touching, then for mouthing, then for holding for 1 second, 2 seconds, 3, 4, 5 etc. It took a while to get over the 1 second hurdle. Cain would hold then drop and I had to be really quick to re-enforce the hold not the drop.

Basically I spent loads of time rewarding the 1 second hold. After several sessions I didn't reward the 1 second drop and kept just offering it back to him when he dropped it. Then making sure that I was quick and rewarded heavily when he did manage a 2 second hold. Some sessions he managed it, some he didn't. If he didn't do a longer hold after several attempts, I'd drop the criteria and reward the 1 second hold so he didn't give up entirely. It took A LOT of repetitions to get over this and I thought Cain would never do it! But once it did finally click with him what I wanted, building up duration became a lot lot easier.

He finds Hold boring so I do mix it in with tug games. We'll tug, drop it, throw, he'll retrieve. The we'll tug, drop it, sit, hold, drop it, throw, retrieve, tug. Obviously clicking and rewarding various behaviours throughout. This helps keep him engaged. If I did more than three holds in a row, he'd lose interest and walk away.

Basically don't give up you'll crack it.

Just a thought - where are you doing this?
Try doing it out on a walk - then if the dog puts it down he`s `lost` the toy. This works especially well if you have 2 dogs btw because the other will pinch it.

I never mix the play hold with the 'proper' one until the dog is really secure with the hold and can pick up different things in a formal situation.

I clicker it and it does sometimes take ages to get over the bit you are stuck on. Don't know how long you have been doing it for but can take weeks depending on how often and what dog it is. It took my neighbour a couple of months but she has a good one now.

rune