Welcome to Training Fido

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

How to train a dog to carry his toys to his bed

First of all I would suggest you should use clicker training. If your dog is not yet clicker trained, first make him understand how the clicker works. Click and treat a couple of times. Now give him one of his toys to hold in his mouth. If he cannot do that, you should first work on the retrieve exercise. I assume here that your dog can retrieve. Now with the toy in his mouth, walk with him and encourage him to bring the toy. Walk with him to his bed. Now show him a treat - he will most probably just drop the toy, because he wants the treat. As he drops the toy, click and give the treat. Repeat this many times. You can start giving a command - any descriptive word you can come up with. Your dog will learn to associate the command with the action of taking the toy to his bed with the click and with the treat.