The Take It and Give Game

Some dogs tend not want to give back the object. For some this is because they consider it is a game, others because they just struggle to let go off their grip. The way to deal with this is to turn the “Take It” and “Give” behaviours into a game.

We cover this in the next video. One of Manouk’s favourite games has always been playing tug. As such, when he is given an object, particularly a flexible object like a piece of rope, fleece, or rubber ring for example he struggles to let it go because he is expecting a fun game of tug and he also find comfort in the grip. But by playing the “Take It – Give” game we turned the situation around. Manouk now understands that the “Give” is part of the game and he expects that he will be able to grab the object again.

The key points to the Take it – Give game introduced in the video are:

  • Offer the object to your dog and use the Take It command so that your dog takes the object in its mouth. Make the Take It behaviour exciting for your dog.
  • As soon as your dog has hold of the object, let it go the object and then get hold of your dogs’ collar. Now offer your dog a food treat from your other hand and use the Give command. You are transferring the reward from the object to the food.
  • When your dog is confidently letting go of the object when you use the Give command start fading the food reward.
  • When you have faded out the food, continue playing the game. As the Take It behaviour becomes more exciting to your dog than the Give, this behaviour now becomes the reward.
  • It needs to be a fast pace of “Give it” “Take it” so you dog does not give up and finds the game fun and rewarding, it is not a test

Tips for training the Hold It

The position of your hand when you are grabbing the object after a Give can help encourage a longer and rock-solid hold of the object.

Usually, we tend to position our hand below our dog’s mouth and your dog just need to drop the object in the hand. This issue is that some dogs will start dropping on the floor instead of in your hand.

The trick is to start pick up the object from above the object rather than below which gives a clearer cue to your dog that you are supposed to grab the object before they let it go. With time you might also notice your dog pushing their head up to give you the object.

Some dogs are very food focused and will concentrate on the source of the treats rather than engaging directly with you, so they are not giving you their full concentration. In this case hide the source of the treats so that they concentrate more on the verbal and body cues that you are giving them

Introducing Take it, Hold it, Give

If you dog can grab the object and keep a little bit of duration, you can also start to introduce 3 verbal cues whilst still working in increasing the duration of the Hold which is the hardest part of the trick.

Remember the 3 stages to teach a command or a verbal cue:

  • First Say the verbal cue whilst you dog is offering the behaviour until your dog is associating the word with the behaviour
  • Give the word before your dog is offering the behaviour, this is when it becomes a command
  • Change your position or the environment to make sure your dog can generalise the behaviour

Take it

Present the object to your dog by holding it in front of their nose and use “Take It”  to ask them to take the object in their mouth. This is what we have been working on in the previous week Mouth Targeting Part 1: Mouthing and Grabbing please add the link

Hold it

When you dog has taken the object, use Hold It to ask your dog to keep the object in its mouth. With the Hold It part of the sequence you need to start building the duration that your dog is holding the object. This is what we are mainly working on this week. Take your time, try to really increase the duration

Give

Finally introduce the Give command and take the object back from your dog as your dog needs to understand when it is supposed to release the object.

When teaching this sequence, a common behaviour that most people have is to start moving their hand towards their dog when they ask their dog to “Give”. What then happens is their dog starts associating the hand movement with the “Give” command. The behaviour you want is for your dog to give the object only when you use the verbal command “Give” without any body cue.

To teach a strong Hold It, move your hands around before asking your dog to Give. As you are moving your hands you can keep using the Hold It command to reinforce that your dog should continue to hold the object. As you previously did in the “Hold It” trick you can also gently touch the object your dog is holding but still ask it to “Hold It”.

I the following video we can see that Leo is developing a good understanding of the Take It, Hold It, Give commands but he is anticipating the Give based on Emily’s hand movements. As such Emily starts moving her hands around before asking for the Give to break the association of the hand movement to the Give command.

It is important to that you work on the Hold It to get a solid behaviour before progressing any further. 

For the next video, Emily had continued to work on Leo’s Hold It so that Leo really understands that it is the command to Give that means let go of the object. Because Leo’s hold has improved, Emily can now ask Leo to Hold the object for longer durations and continue to hold whilst she stands up.

Once you have a solid Hold It behaviour the next stage is for you to work the sequence with a variety of different objects and with larger distractions. It is likely that as you introduce a new object to your dog you will see that it will be initially less confident with the Hold It and may start dropping the object before the give command. This is quite common and is one of the reasons why you need to work with different objects to reinforce the Hold It.

Introducing “Hold It”

This week you are going to continue with building your dog’s Mouth Targeting Tricks. You should have worked on engaging your dog to grab an object and now you need to help your dog understand that what you want is to “Hold” the object with a moment of Stillness. 

Wait to introduce the “Hold it” command that your dog is having some duration with keeping the object in its mouth, if fact at this stage you may not even introduce a command yet.

Touch

As we have seen until now, dogs are good at doing tricks with their Front Legs and Paws. In this Topic you will start working with your dog’s hind paws.

Your final challenge with hind paw targeting tricks will be to teach your dog to give a hind paw on command. Yes, it is possible!  But it is a little bit more challenging as not all dogs have a good “understanding” of how to use their hind paws for tricks.

Over the coming weeks, you are going to work on some more simple tricks that encourage the movement of the hind paws to develop your dog’s awareness of their hind paws.

The first trick concentrating on your dog’s hind paws is going to be to get them to touch on an object so that their back paws are higher than their front.

You will need a Gym step or a Yoga step that is suitably large enough for your dog.

As your dog naturally has a less conscious awareness of where its back feet are in relation to its front, work the trick slowly and calmly so that it makes the association that it is being rewarded for its Hind paw position rather than what it is doing with its front paws.

The key steps for this trick are:

Stage 1: Luring

  1. Use your On it trick to get your dog to put its front paws on the step
  2. Lure your dog forwards from the On It position so that its front paws are now on the ground and both its hind paws are now on the step.
  3. Whilst in this position, reward your dog so that its head remains low to the ground and start to introduce the Touch verbal cue whist your dog is in position. This is the verbal cue that you will eventually use as a command for your dog to perform this trick unaided. Keep rewarding generously to give value for the position and repeating the verbal cue whilst your dog stays in the correct position so your dog associates the word with the behaviour.
  4. Decide of a release word to release your dog from the position. The release word is important as your dog needs to understand how long it needs to stay in the position and when the trick is over
  5. Use your release word and Lure your dog forwards again so that it walks of the step and has all four paws on the ground.

Stage 2: improve the accuracy and the duration

  1. When repeating the trick, remember that you can approach the step from either side. Also do the trick with your dog on your left and right hand sides so it does not learn to consider that your position is a component of the trick.
  2. As your dog improves at holding the touch position, start to dissociate your position from the step and your dog.  Gradually move away from the step and your dog and whilst your dog is in position. Do not forget to always use your release cue so your dog gets confident in understanding when to release itself.

Take it, Hold It, Give!

In this topic you are going to continue with building your dog’s Mouth Targeting Tricks. You have already worked on the Hold It, so you will now be extending this behaviour with the Take It, Hold It and Give.

Take it

Present the object to your dog by holding it in front of their nose and use Take It to ask them to take the object in their mouth.

Hold it

When you dog has taken the object, use Hold It to ask your dog to keep the object in its mouth. With the Hold It part of the sequence you need to start building the duration that your dog is holding the object.

Give

Finally introduce the Give command and take the object back from your dog.

When teaching this sequence, a common behaviour that most people have is to start moving their hand towards their dog when they ask their dog to “Give”. What then happens is their dog starts associating the hand movement with the “Give” command. The behaviour you want is for your dog to give the object only when you use the verbal command “Give” without any body cue.

To teach a strong Hold It, move your hands around before asking your dog to Give. As you are moving your hands you can keep using the Hold It command to reinforce that your dog should continue to hold the object. As you previously did in the “Hold It” trick you can also gently touch the object your dog is holding but still ask it to “Hold It”.

I the following video we can see that Leo is developing a good understanding of the Take It, Hold It, Give commands but he is anticipating the Give based on Emily’s hand movements. As such Emily starts moving her hands around before asking for the Give to break the association of the hand movement to the Give command.

It is important to that you work on the Hold It to get a solid behaviour before progressing any further.  

For the next video, Emily had continued to work on Leo’s Hold It so that Leo really understands that it is the command to Give that means let go of the object. Because Leo’s hold has improved, Emily can now ask Leo to Hold the object for longer durations and continue to hold whilst she stands up.

Once you have a solid Hold It behaviour the next stage is for you to work the sequence with a variety of different objects and with larger distractions. It is likely that as you introduce a new object to your dog you will see that it will be initially less confident with the Hold It and may start dropping the object before the give command. This is quite common and is one of the reasons why you need to work with different objects to reinforce the Hold It.

There are some dogs, particularly if they are toy orientated, that once they have been given an object, they do not want to give it back. For some this is because they consider it is a game, but for others it can be because holding the object boosts their confidence and they consider that simply holding the object is a reward. As such they are less inclined to give the object back. The way to deal with this is turn the Take It and Give behaviours into a game.

We cover this in the next video. One of Manouk’s favourite games has always been playing tug. As such when he is given an object, particularly a flexible object like a piece of rope, fleece or rubber ring for example he is disinclined to let go because he is expecting a fun game of tug.

The key points to the Take it – Give game introduced in the video are:

  • Offer the object to your dog and use the Take It command so that your dog takes the object in its mouth. Make the Take It behaviour exciting for your dog.
  • As soon as your dog has hold of the object, let it go the object and then get hold of your dogs’ collar. Now offer your dog a food treat from your other hand and use the Give command. You are transferring the reward from the object to the food.
  • When your dog is confidently letting go of the object when you use the Give command start fading the food reward.
  • When you have faded out the food, continue playing the game. As the Take It behaviour becomes more exciting to your dog than the Give, this behaviour now becomes the reward.