"Hold'

 

Trying again at the whole blogging thing. I know, I say that EVERY TIME. But I have multiple dogs in training and goals, so I'll try to be more faithful about blogging. 

Darcie is in season and is very unhappy about being confined. But that means lots of Kongs and toys and lots of special one on one time with me walking her, so she's surviving. It's only day 5 though, so we'll see. 

Darcie has done a lot of play retrieving, and carrying things of various sizes and materials around, but we haven't worked on a formal retrieve yet. Mostly because I keeping thinking *I* will mess it up, but can't put it off any longer so here we go. When I first started training (years ago) I had only seen the dumbbell retrieve taught in a very harsh manner.and it was never fun to watch and I KNOW it wasn't fun for the dogs. 

I saw somewhere (maybe Chris Bach? I can't remember) about initially teaching the hold with your finger in the dog's mouth, and decided to start there.

I put The Brat on lead and had her sit in front of me. With my right hand holding the collar I slipped my left index finger behind her canines, right where the dumbbell would sit. The first time she tried to move her head, but I stuck with her and as soon as she held still, and her tongue was still I used my verbal marker and rewarded  her. The next time she didn't resist at all. I started marking her mouth and tongue being still the first couple of times, then moved to her holding my finger, the second I felt her tighten up I marked and rewarded. After literally 1 minute she was holding my finger, even when I was gently pulling it away from her. She just held fast and thought the whole thing was hilariously funny. She had a good understanding of what I wanted by the time we finished.  Good deal, a couple more sessions then we can move to the dumbbell. 

I am the very proud owner of my first set of scent articles, 3 Utility gloves, a pair of tongs, article bag, lovely Outward Hound training bag and two more dumbbells. Got an amazing deal on them. 

This winter have SOOO many new training books and DVDs to go through. It will almost feel like I'm in dog training "school." hah!

I still have a couple more pages to finish on the blog. I thought it'd be a good idea to have  a page for each dog, with a few pictures and a bit about them so keeping track of them in the blog posts would be easier.