I would like to train Buster to retrive something, he's not interested in the slightest, but I know what he's like, when he knows that something will get him a biccy he'll happily do it and you never  know, with enough repititions he may actually enjoy doing it for the sake of doing it (that might be expecting too much!!). I don't want him to run after a ball or anything like that, it wouldn't be a good idea with his bad elbows, but to simply pick up and bring me an object on command.

I figured that I would need to teach him to hold an object in his mouth first.

I've been trying for years, not evey day as I get bored and frustrated that I can't show him how to progress.

He doesn't 'do' toys so there is never an opportunity to reward him picking up a toy naturally and he's completely not interested in toys, if I do try to get him to hold one, if he does, he'll  throw it away!

I tried an empty 2 litre coke bottle to start with (he seems a bit interested in them). I pressed it gently to his closed mouth and after a few times of doing that he opened his mouth a bit. so I pushed the coke bottle in then praised & gave a biccy (I wasn't forcefull he did not find it intimidating, he knew we were in training mode and that the correct action would get a biccy). I held the bottle to his mush again and he opened his mouth. I did this several times, until he opened his mouth reliably to place his mouth round the bottle, then I introcuded the word 'hold' to get him to do it on command. All seemed good, but would only work on the bottle and only if I offered it to him.

So I tried a different object, a tin of dog food -  the problem I have is that the first 'hold' will be nice and gentle (but not firm enough to actully hold it himself, I need to keep hold of it), the second attempt from him will be harder, but so hard he's denting the can rather a lot (full, sealed can of dog food, so there are no sharp edges).

I would love him to be able to pick up the can (ideally from out of the cupboard) and bring it to me un-punctured and not mangled, but I have no idea how to get this behaviour.

Seperately I've been working with him with a football - he's frightened of them, so we've been working in the hosue to get him to touch it with nose/paw and have built up to actually being able to send him accross the kithcen to the ball (rather than placing it infornt of him), for him to kick it with a paw (with a enthusiasm as he knows it earns a biccy LOL, it's brill as it's the noise of a fottball being kicked that bothers him, but he's OK with the noise it makes when he kicks it, so we're making  progress :-D )
That action (go to the ball) has a 'get it' command, so it wouldn't be too difficult to send him to a can of food (for example) for him to bring it to me - it's just the picking it up,, holding & carrying that is the problem!!

Can anybody help. Just to clarify, this is just for fun, he's not active or playfull so this is just to give him something else in his bag of tricks, not for obedience or anything like that! Just getting him to be able to hold an object without me helping him would be a HUGE step.

ETA, sorry the post is so long, but I wanted to let you know what I have tried as I have a feeling it's my method that is wrong!

Why don't you try him on a dumb-bell as these have been designed to be 'easy' to hold compared to other objects?

Try a dumbbell with a sock or pair of pants wrapped round the bite bar, un-washed of course and preferably old.

  This is the sort of thing I would use a clicker for, so you can mark precisely the bits you wanted.

Soooo.. back chain it, (as you kind of are doing anyway) - first stage is him dropping/putting the item into your hand, so you pop it in his mouth and catch it when he drops it, click and treat.

Then  you really get in the idea that it HAS to go in your hand, not the floor, not an inch from your hand, but IN your hand - so refine that.

  Then you can try to increase the hold for a few seconds - you can either attempt to encourage this by not offering your hand to put it in, OR you can give him the item from slightly further away  so he has to hold it w hilst he moves it to your hand.

The next stages are again a choice, you can either increase the distance or you can change where he is picking it from, pick which ever will confuse him the least but at some point soon you will have to have him picking it up himself rather than having it handed to him..

Say you work on distance so  now he will HAVE to hold the can longer because hes picking it up fro mfurther away and hes got to bring it to you for you to click..   then the next stage might be picking it up off the floor, and the next out of the cupboard..

Obviously break these steps down however small they are needed, and if you think he isn't grasping an element of the trick you can stop, teach him something else thats related or will give him a skill (for instance, playing 101 things to do with a box, or indeed a can.. would teach him about interacting with stuff on the floor more readily) and go back to it later.

Don't forget about the 'magic' of latent learning either - if you can end on a high note and have a break you might find you have made a LOT more progress over night, or in a few days time, than you thought.

> This is the sort of thing I would use a clicker for, so you can mark precisely the bits you wanted.

When I first got Buster as a pup, I 'charged' the word "GOODBOY" with treats, and have always used that to 'mark' a behaviour - is that method any good?
It seems to have been great for everything else (taught him to nod his head, lick on command, shut cuboard doors & draws, target things with nose or paw as well as general beahviours), but with this, I am having problems with the timings because i don't know which bits are worth 'marking' to build on. I started out with 'marking' for him touching the object, now for him putting his mouth around it, but haven't known what to do from there.

Thanks so much for the step-by-step breakdown, I know what I should be aiming for now :)

Do you think it's worth changing to an actual clicker?

I think it would be worth the change - the precision can make a huge difference compared to just using a word, no matter how quick you say it.  And speaking for myself, I find I can physically click the clicker much faster than I can begin to say anything - it's more of a reflex, speech is more of a conscious action (if that makes sense, this is how I see it anyway).

Some dogs just have no interest in playing fetch, I taught my Mums 9week old dachsie to fetch during the times she spent with me when Mum couldn't take her with her, now 9 yrs later she would retrieve till the cows come home.

A year later I got Rhuari and tried to get him to play fetch and he wasn't interested, my 15 yr old cocker had more interest in the game but not the energy to keep repeating the task.

The 2 I bred that are still here would run up to what I had thrown and just came back empty mouthed despite having learnt how to pick up and hold first.

They have others to play with and toys and games hold no interest for them.

Good Luck with the training.

> find I can physically click the clicker much faster than I can begin to say anything - it's more of a reflex, speech is more of a conscious action (if that makes sense, this is how I see it anyway).

Yep, makes sense :) I'll give a clicker a try :) Is it hard to change over like that (from the verbal marker to a click), or is it simply a case of 'charging' the clicker and off we go?

> Some dogs just have no interest in playing fetch

I don't think Buster will ever enjoy playing fetch for the sake of it, but he does enjoy anything that will 'earn' him a biccy.

He has bad elbows, so a 'proper' game of high-energy fetch would never be the ambition anyway. I'd hope that, if I can get him to carry me something in the house, it gives him another means of exercise. He's not an active dog, will not play with toys and prefers to spend his day either sleeping or laying down keeping us company, if I can get him to bring me things, it will get him a little more mobile & active indoors so will be a help for his general mobility.
*Touch-wood* he hasn't had any need for a rest from his daily walk for well over a year now, but if he ever does need a couple of days rest (occasionaly a stumble due to his bad elbows will cause him pain that would need him to stay off a walk for a few days), it gives him something to 'do' at home while providing some gentle, controlled activity. It's easy enough to get him mobile to follow a biscuit, but luring him like that makes him too excitable to risk when he's needing to be carefull. If he will 'fetch' me things on command, he'll do it in his usual, slow, pace - (the 'mastiff tempo') - while being chuffed that's he's earnt a biccy :)

Mental stimulation for a dog like Buster isn't very hard to manage, getting him to obey a few commands is enough (his default setting is, lay back and chill out!), getting him to 'fetch' would give another way of providing stimulation and a fall-back should I ever have to need to keep him off a walk, (thinking way ahead, when he's older, if the arthritis effects his mobility, then the longer I can keep him moving around the better for him), it also gives another means to build on his mobility.
Some gentle walking around the house doesn't seem much, but for a couch-potato dog it's extra movement that can be increased and built upon :) (he does get a daily walk, I'm reluctant to give him 2 walks per day as it could be too much for his elbows - as it proved to be in the past -, so I want to build him up to being used to extra activity first)

Sorry, that turned into a bit of an essay!

My Mums dachsie knows the name of all her toys, Percy pheasant,wee Percy small pheasant, Gidaffe giraffe[ I bought the toy but didn't name it]etc and will search around the house looking for what we have asked for.

Maybe if you name things and start him off with say 3 items in front of you and work towards him at least nosing the right one when asked then picks it up,later move them about a yard away and request one of them and reward him if he noses it but give extra special treat if he picks it up, this also works his brain without over taxing his joints.

It must be awful knowing he has such poor mobility at such a young age in such a big dog too, I totally understand your need to keep him mobile with gentle exercise

The way you are teaching"hold"sounds good to me,and how my trainer showed me,the only difference is that she told me to lightly support the dogs bottom jaw(being the movable bit)while repeating the word "hold",just a second or so at first,then say leave,or give,and treat,and build up the time.Sorry if youre already doing this,you sound a far better trainer than me,anyway!

> My Mums dachsie knows the name of all her toys, Percy pheasant,wee Percy small pheasant, Gidaffe giraffe[ I bought the toy but didn't name it]etc and will search around the house looking for what we have asked for.

Ahh that's sooo sweet, what a clever girl  :-D

> It must be awful knowing he has such poor mobility at such a young age in such a big dog too

He's doing great at the moment. He was crippled as a pup (elbow displasia), but we went with the specialists advice of not opperating and managing it through excersise and weight control. It tooks months before he was able to manage a decent length walk.
He'll be 5 years old in a couple of months (he's limp-free, medication free, but his elbows are fusing). The walk he has now includes going up a very steep hill. The last time Buster hurt a leg, the vet sugested to cut his walk in half and do 2 shoter walks, but that means missing out the hill (and Bust is not keen on having a shorter walk, he'll sit down and refuse to come home!)
As a naturally sedate dog, I find that steep hill to be very important for his mobility, even cutting it out for a few days and I can see his mobility suffer, if I can keep him at a level that includes that hill it helps him alot.
I've found lately, that as he's settled into maturity, he is more inclined to just spend ages sniffing on his walk, so I've started to encourage him to walk the route faster in short bursts. Just doing this seems to be getting him stronger. He can have a little pounce around when he meets another dog (trying to encourage it to play), without it causing him a limp which is another improvement (a few eager play-bows form him in the past would give him a sore elbow :( ). And we can tank down the road to the feild at a nifty pace now  without it causing him any problems now.

The hard thing is finding the balance, the more excersise he has, the better it is for him, but too much or too fast a pace too soon, sets him back. He's doing really well now, so if I can do all I can to improve how is,  it should prolong his mobility :)

> Maybe if you name things and start him off with say 3 items in front of you and work towards him at least nosing the right one when asked then picks it up,later move them about a yard away and request one of them and reward him if he noses it but give extra special treat if he picks it up, this also works his brain without over taxing his joints.

I hadn't thought of that :) He's good at targeting things with his nose (he'll poke whatever I point to), but I've never thought of naming objects to target, I've always thought he was too dim for that LOL, but I'll give it a go, he does often suprise me with how he can learn and figure things out :) (probably a case of poor teacher rather than dim student *blush*)

>  to lightly support the dogs bottom jaw

ahhh, good plan :)

I tried Buster earleir, with theemx's instructions fresh in my head - (get him to drop object into my hand). The only way I could get him to hold it long enough to plop it into my hand was to give it to him while he had his head tipped up so he held it the whole time it took for him to drop his head back downwards - it was only about 1 second (he does things slowly - that's the 'mastiff tempo' again!) but that's the longest he's ever kept anything in his mouth :-D
I also remembered (thanks again theemx) to keep the session short and end on a high-note, so we only did a few before finishing, he was very eager for more as he followed me around for a few minutes afterwards, hoping I'd stuff a can in his mouth again, LOL
I used a can of soup this time, as I thought he'd be less inclinded to chomp down on it than a can of dog-food, it worked a bit, but I still had a dented can of soup very quickly, so I will need to invest in a dumbell!

> or is it simply a case of 'charging' the clicker and off we go?

This.  Dead easy to change and I find they pick it up straight away, especially if they're used to the basic concept already, as Buster is :-)

I'll be interested to hear how you go! One of mine is kind of clicker trained though we don't use it very often. I usually just say 'good' and give the treat, need to get the clicker out again. I'm at a similar stage with her, she will take the dumbbell and hold it for a little bit, but I can't persuade her to reach for it at all. I'm off on a clicker workshop for small dog obedience next month so I have my fingers crossed!

I only get a second or even less the first few times I try teaching a dog to hold something, I tend to have the clicker AND the item in one hand, and the other hand under the dogs mouth ready to catch and then I pass.. click as it drops into my hand.. catch with the waiting hand!

I find the hardest part is getting the dog to realise that the item MUST go in my hand, not the floor, not on my foot, not neaaaaaaar my hand but IN my hand.. though if that aspect isn't as important to you don't worry about it (though if he drops a can of soup on your foot.. owwwww!)