Stan Rawlinson
Dog Behaviourist & Obedience Trainer
The Original Doglistener
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Training Your dog to Retrieve and Fetch


How to teach your dog to retrieve/fetch


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This video is all about working with your dog to train it to fetch. The video clearly encourages you not to be harsh, even if your dog makes a mistake, to achieve results but to ensure that your dog is acknowledged and appreciated for its obedience. It gives you ideas and choices of areas to train your dog, as well as, what objects to use. The trainer in this video clearly loves his dog and enjoys training him - a lesson for all of us who own dogs and want them to be well trained in any or every respect!!

Hi, my name's Stan Rawlinson. I am a dog behaviorist and obedience trainer and this is Charlie. The little horror down here is a cross Jack Russel Dachshund, a stretch limo Jack Russel, and today I am going to be showing you how to teach your dog to fetch. "Fetch" is actually quite important aspect of training. It gives stimulation to the dog, it gives exercise, it makes the dog's brain work and sometimes dogs get very bored in what they do, so this is really quite an important one but not one that dogs do naturally so you've got to teach them.

Have you got a puppy dummy or anything like that? If not what you can start off with is a sock, nice and soft, no problem just a sock with a couple of other socks stuffed in it and there you have it - just a little something that they can go and get. And what it is, is that I am going to start Charlie off with this.

When you first start, you can throw it and let the dog just chase after it. Charlie, here! What's this? Yes! Now fetch it here. Good! Good job! Dog's getting excited already. Now, why am I doing it in a nice narrow area here? Quite simply because I don't want the dog running round, running past - that's why I have blocked off the stairs here, with some things, so he can't run up the stairs with this to go and steal it and hide somewhere and I want him to bring it back to me, he has nowhere to go, he has to bring it back to me.

You see, this is how you start. Now here we go again, just one of these - "Go on then, good boy, fetch it here - yes!" "Good dog! Yes he is, a good dog!" Probably saw him jumping up there, don't know if you noticed, he didn't jump up on me, what he did is he jumped in excitement. I've taught my dog not to jump on me because it's bad manners to all intents and purposes. Now we can go on from this and just increase it by using different lures - get a one with a rabbit skin on it. This is a gun dog type dummy, so we use the rabbit skin one now, but I want to go one or two steps further. "Come here. Good. Here, sit."

I'm going to hold his collar and I am going to throw it so he can't go till I tell him. "Okay!" "Fetch it here" "Where is it?" Oh Oh! He went to get that one, not quite sure of the rabbit. "Which one is it? Go on then. Okay." I use that on my gun dogs so he's never had to pick one of these up and he's never picked a rabbit up. So, "Where is it? Fetch it here. Here, fetch it here." He's never picked that up and I've never ever trained him to do that. This is the one they use on my gun dogs, I'll be showing you that later in a different DVD. But now, "here", I am going to get him to sit, hold his collar, throw it - "Okay" - so, I made him hold back there, the reason being, every time I throw something, "There, good dog", I don't want him to chase after it so once I've got him to that level - "here, sit" - I'm then going to take him out into the garden and show you how to do it properly while you're outside and in the park.

So, that's where we are going now. Okay, so now we are in the garden with a little alleyway so he can't run past me. Now we're in a much wider garden and he'll be more happy to bring it back to me now that we've done that in a narrow area that he hadn't managed to get past me and so I'm going to use the same sock, but this time, I don't want him to touch it so, that's why I held his collar before, so I'm going to say, "Leave it!" "Go ahead, fetch it here. Good boy! Dead. " Tell him "dead" to release it and once he releases it, swap it with a treat and take it off him. Don't try to snatch it off him. "Sit. Good. Leave it." "Okay. Fetch it here. Good. Dead. Sit. Good." You can use varying things, dumb bells, balls anything like that - "Here, here, sit. Leave it" - "Okay." "Fetch it here. Good. Good boy! Dead. Sit. Good boy!" Going to give him a treat for that - "Good" - always finish with a "Good", treat. Always finish your training on a high never finish it on a negative or in a bad mood. Vitally important. "Well done Charlie! Good dog! Come on, Fetch it! Yes!