I’ve been working on the retrieve with Hestia. She got to the point where she was reliably going over to the dropped hankie. However, she was pouncing on the hankie and not getting her face anywhere near it.
So yesterday I tried something new. I sat on the ground with the hankie behind my back and quickly presented the hankie at Hestia’s head-height. If she pounced on it, I did not reward. If she touched it with her face, I did.
This worked much better for getting her to use her face instead of her paws. So today Brad videotaped our training session to capture this stage in our training.
She did well during the training. Most of the time she used her face to touch the hankie. A few times she opened her mouth and even put her mouth on the hankie. I jackpot rewarded these times!
Check out the video below, and a picture below that, of her learning the retrieve in this second check-in.
In the video and picture, I am a woman with long curly brown hair wearing a yellow dress and tropical leggings. Hestia is a small white and black dog with a smushed nose and googley eyes. The hankie is a dark blue hankie with white and red flowers on it.
