Dutch Shepherd Forum

Part of the work that I do with endeavor is keeping her useful by simply fetching stuff for me. My boots, my shoes, etc. Lately, when we go to my GF's house, I load her food into the backpack I use for keeping all her tracking stuff together. Couple weeks ago, my back was hurting and I didn't want to get up to feed her, so I sent her away with "go get your bag". She side eyed me as she turned to the other room where the bag sat. The expression on her face and body was "WTF are you saying?!? Never heard this crap before, but I guess I gotta go do SOMETHING". I could see her walk the perimeter of the room and stop when she got to the bag. I marked it with a Yes and said bring it. She brought it after poking around for a few seconds and finding the best way to grip it. I pulled her kibble from the bag and feed her immediately.
YESTERDAY, while on my way out, I realized I had left my coat upstairs, so I unleashed En, pointed upstairs and said go get my coat. I have NEVER trained her to isolate the word coat from a direction. Boots, shoes, keys, socks, hat, etc... All those things she had learned to differentiate. Never coat. I heard her moving around upstairs and when I heard her stop, I was guessing it was because she was standing in front of my coat. I gave her a "bring it", and a moment later she came down the stairs with my jacket bunched up and evenly placed in her mouth. I was super proud of her!
I'm guessing she went upstairs looking for anything that smelled like me. She had definitely learned that "your" and"my" mean she's searching for a different class of items.

That is so great! How did you initially get her to accept carrying an item?

This is exactly the task we were supposed to be working on with Bramble. She is supposed to retrieve my son's headphones when he covers his ears or I give a command. The next training session was supposed to be moving from touching the target to getting her to put the target in her mouth. Then everything was shut down and we're stuck on that step because I don't have a clue how to get her to take it.

Think of it in terms of cross training. Find something Bramble likes to hold/chew on/ play with. present the item, and as she naturally goes to take the item, simply mark it with "take it", or whatever verbal command is appropriate for you guys. Work that for a free days, a few times a day. Then put it down on the floor with the dog on a sit-stay. Give the command "take it", or whatever you have been saying to mark the behavior. Do that for a few days. Once she has the command down, introduce different items to the game. Keep them palatable at first though. Most dogs have an aversion to metal in their mouths, so keep those types of things in mind. Set your lessons up for baby steps and set the dog up to succeed at each level.
To surmise, think of each tiny step involved in the job you want your dog to do.
•watch the kid
•recognize the need for headphones
• search for headphones
• take headphones in mouth
•deliver headphones to kid
There can be many ways to train each of these things individually, and you should be training each step independent of the others. There's no need to work on order in my opinion. Those individual tasks can be put together in the future once each one is solid.

That is a good plan. We've been feeding her supper by having her touch the headphones (that she was originally a little intimidated by). I've been using "take it" on her tugs.....so this will be a good evolution of the behaviors.

I worked the same method only the opposite....lol
My dog will bring anything to me when I say “bring it “ She will release it to my hand no matter what it is or how valuable