Teaching a dog to take an object.
Retrieve or Rapport d’objet lance –
this is how the exercise is called in the FCI Rules of Mondioring. However, this skill
is considered as necessary in many dogs competitions, tests and exams. Usually
dog masters, trying to teach a dog this exercise, meet with three main
difficulties: the dog rushes to catch object the same moment the object is
thrown; the dog runs to the object but doesn’t take it; and the dog takes the
object and happily runs with him far from the master.
There are many
methodics how to teach a dog to fulfill
the command “apport” and to bring back the thrown object. The most wildly
spread mistake is to try to teach a dog to carry out the whole exercise from
the very beginning. It rarely gives fruitful
results.
It
seems more effective to divide the exercise into several parts and to help your
dog learn it step by step.
How to teach a dog to take
the object? Why he or she will do it?
The dog doesn’t see any obvious
reason for taking it and doesn’t understand why he/she should do it. Many dog
owners begin with pushing the object into dog’s mouth and holding the mouth for
some time. But usually the dog lets the object fall down the moment his/her
owner takes hands away from the mouth as well as the object. Some instructors
even fix the dog for not letting him/her run away or turn the head. To my mind
the only obvious result is that the dog gets a stress and loses any wish to
carry out the exercise.
It seems much more
effective to use positive motivation and increase dog’s interest in the
exercise through something that he/she enjoys – tips, playing with a ball,
biting a toy, etc. For each dog different stimuls should be chosen.
The key figure of the video is young malinois of working line who likes
to bite the toy. So it helped easily to
teach him to take the object. Even showing the toy was a stimul for
him to take the object as he knew that he would be awarded and enjoyed the
exercise. Do not forget to give command “apport” the moment you suggest your
dog to take the object J
