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FETCHING/RETRIEVING

First I will define the concept of fetching again. With fetching is meant ”the dog bringing an object to its supervisor. This object is in relation to the discipline in which the dog is trained”. This can, for example, be poultry in hunting, or an object related to a victim with rescue work and, yes!, a fetching block in the dog sport.

The last mentioned however has nothing to do with the fetching a service dog does in every day life. I have never seen a service dog discipline in which is thrown with objects!

How do I teach my dog to fetch.
I start when the dog is 6 months old because the teeth changing then has finished. I do expect that the dog has been made familiar to the commands Here, Sit, Down and Stay, in a playful way. Of course we have a young dog that likes to pick up objects and drag them around, because this was a criterion for buying this dog in the first place! We also have teased the dog with all kinds of objects during search- and find games.

Learning how to fetch is NOT done in a playful way! In training, the dog is confronted with a DUTY for the first time. We make sure we have a short piece of aluminium tube, covered with tape. We take the young dog next to us, on a short leash, and keep the small tube in front of his mouth with the friendly command HOLD. If you have not yet spoiled the dog, he will take the tube. We gently place our hand around his mouth, repeating the command HOLD. NOT TOO LONG! After this we calmly give the command “let go” and take the tube out of his mouth. Directly after this we give the dog a treat. If all this went well, do NOT REPEAT this but throw away the tube so the dog can play with it. The next day we repeat these actions, just as long until we know for sure that the dog controls this discipline. You are allowed to pressurise the dog in a calm and controlled way, after all, it is a duty! The reward relieves the dog from stress. NEVER be angry with the dog, this works contrarily.

I closely follow my method I described on my site under fetching/retrieving in training my Boban in this part of training. Fortunately Boban has a very hard character so I can put a lot of pressure on him. As a result of this I never had a dog so far on this item at this age. (7 month) At times he can be quite resistant, grawling and biting, but he has to learn who is his master. In training him quite hard, but always fair. When not in training I'm very tolerant. This works! He picks up every object I demand, he holds it steady in his mouth and brings it merry and quickly. In trailing this is now a great benefit. When he has growing older I'll put more attention on perfection. For the time beeing I'm very happy with this.

Next, we expand the testing by rubbing the tube under his mouth and, if all goes well, taking the tube down to the ground until he takes it of the ground. A very good exercise is to have the dog hold the tube in his mouth while he is walking next to you, and praising him for this. Praise him all you can! After this, we make the dog sit, or tie him to a pole with the leash. We place the object on the ground at a distance of 1 metre from the dog and, later on, even further way. On the leash we make him fetch and bring the object, he does not have to sit down yet! Do not throw the object, this will make the dog restless, and he will nibble and munch on the object. During this stage we can use different kinds of objects, also a fetching block. If the dog does all this in a fine way, we can start fetching with tracking. It depends on the dog how much it can be put under pressure. A strong dog can easily be pressurised, a gentle dog however will not need this pressure.

When the dog starts fetching and bringing the objects with tracking, we keep this up for at least 6 weeks until we start taking up the demands. I do expect that the tracking is done at least 3 times a week! Do not forget the search- and find games in the woods or in the field. Because the disappearance of the pressure by owner, the dog now is allowed to do his own thing, he will always fetch and bring the object to the owner. When the dog drops the object in front of its owner, we will have to force him to pick it up again and make sure he keeps it in his mouth until we take it out of his mouth. After this he of course is rewarded.

Now we can start with the fetching block at the club. We take the dog on a long leash next to us, using the commands SIT and STAY, and put the block several metres in front of us on the ground. We go back to the dog and send him to fetch the block using the command FETCH. When the dog brings back the block, we gently make him sit in front of us and tell him to hold the block. If he wants to let go of the block we thump him on the nose. Do not let him pull the block, this will make him restless. After the command LET GO take the block out of his mouth and reward him with a treat. To keep up the drive we take up the following: take away the block for quite a distance, and when we have returned to the dog we hold him by his collar and we boost the dog. When he starts howling, we let him go. Using this technique I have taught dogs to get the block in bitework. Sometimes they growl and take a somersault when fetching the block! If this is done satisfactory, you make the dog come up to you. You do NOT take the block from the dog, we do this after he has followed you for some time. Do NOT reward him with a ball after fetching! The dog has to love the block and not the ball!

Picture: Richard en Diego

When the dog reaches the age were he is allowed to learn to jump over fences, we can never combine this with fetching, not with a block or with the ball. First we teach him to jump on command, more on this subject in a coming chapter. Gradually we start perfecting the fetching and bringing, in accordance to the discipline we are teaching him. The basic principle of fetching and bringing is duty, the dog does not need to know more, and with this way he will enjoy doing so!

In my vision on training I started with fetching and bringing for a reason. In my opinion, fetching is the most important call-exercise. As I already pointed out in my article on tracking, a working dog (service dog) must fetch literally everything and anything.

Jacques

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