I have been working with my dog on these for about a week or two now. He will Take and Hold pretty well. He will let me take it from him, but he doesn’t actually Give yet. For Give, I want him to actually drop it into my hand. That isn’t happening yet, so we just have to keep working on it. A week really isn’t enough time.
He is starting to come if I give it to him when he is a bit away from me and then I call him. I haven’t had luck though in getting him to pick it up if it is on the bed a bit away from me, and then have him bring it to me. Again, we are only a week into this phase.
The key to all of these trainings it to work on them consistently until he understands what I want, by shaping the action. As he does something that is close, I praise and encourage it. This encourages him to move closer to the correct action.
Dogs that are trained by training groups often take 18 months to train their dogs. I expect it will take as long to train my dog. Just because I am training my dog to do a different set of tasks doesn’t mean that it will be faster. Hardly. In fact, since I am not a professional trainer, it may take longer. Of course, since he is the only one I am working with, it may move more quickly. And since I work with him at all times of the day (during any activity, I can work in some training, that may speed things up as well.)
He did surprise me yesterday though. He spontaneously did an action that I had not started to train yet – I had read something that caused me to cry, and he came to me and tried to cheer me up. I, of course, rewarded him for that action. I always want to encourage actions that are tasks that he is supposed to do, even if they are not ones I am purposefully training at that moment. In fact, I wasn’t sure how I was going to train him on this one. How does one teach empathy?
