So I have a beagle/boxer. She is great. Housebroken, sit, stay, come, down, down from a distance, stand and I could walk her without a leash with very little worry. I can also tell her to stay, throw her toy somewhere and say "go find your toy" and she goes and looks around for it. The same goes for "Go find mommy/daddy". She looks around and it is clear she is checking the last place we hid first. Since she has that hound DNA in here, I'd like to find a way to train her to find things based on scent, basically like a police dog when searching for a body/person. Does anyone know what the first step in this is or how to go about it?
Teaching a dog to "find"
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The Sniff & Find game is one that's often taught in Puppy Kindergarten. Start with a tasty treat, let her sniff it and then 'hide' it in plain sight just a few feet away. Slowly hide it in harder spots but, keep it easy to find in the learning stages.
Get your dog excited by allowing him to play with his favorite toy for a few minutes or give him a taste of his favorite treat. Then put him on a sit/stay or have a friend hold him while you place the item on the floor several feet away. Release him and then tell him, "Find it! Find it!" Of course he will immediately go to it, so give him lots of praise. Repeat, each time placing the toy or treat a little farther away. Eventually you can place it in another room and even make it more challenging by hiding it in a box or under a towel. Be sure to encourage him and praise him and if he ever seems tired, respect that and allow him to rest. http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/bow_wow/115330
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I would go about this slightly differently. Just my two cents, so please let me know if something doesn't sound right.
Asking your dog to "find" a toy or a piece of food is all very well, because those are objects that instantly attract the dog. If you want to do that, all you have to do is follow Tooney's advice -- leave it somewhere easy at first, where the dog will immediately go straight to the object, and then increase the difficulty of the hiding places.
But what if you want your dog to find, say, a set of keys? Or a remote control? These are things that dogs aren't naturally inclined to look for. In this case I would probably use a clicker to shape a "take it" and "give it" with the set of keys. Put the keys on the ground; click+treat for looking at it, then c+t for sniffing it, then c+t for picking it up and so on. (This will, of course, take place over a number of sessions.)
Once the dog becomes familiar with picking up the keys and giving them to you, toss the keys a short distance away so he has to go to the keys and bring them to you. That's when you can start gradually upping the difficulty of the keys' hiding place.
Basically, it's the same advice as Tooney's and bambee's... except you first teach the dog what it is you want him to find, and what you want him to do when he gets it.
Asking your dog to "find" a toy or a piece of food is all very well, because those are objects that instantly attract the dog. If you want to do that, all you have to do is follow Tooney's advice -- leave it somewhere easy at first, where the dog will immediately go straight to the object, and then increase the difficulty of the hiding places.
But what if you want your dog to find, say, a set of keys? Or a remote control? These are things that dogs aren't naturally inclined to look for. In this case I would probably use a clicker to shape a "take it" and "give it" with the set of keys. Put the keys on the ground; click+treat for looking at it, then c+t for sniffing it, then c+t for picking it up and so on. (This will, of course, take place over a number of sessions.)
Once the dog becomes familiar with picking up the keys and giving them to you, toss the keys a short distance away so he has to go to the keys and bring them to you. That's when you can start gradually upping the difficulty of the keys' hiding place.
Basically, it's the same advice as Tooney's and bambee's... except you first teach the dog what it is you want him to find, and what you want him to do when he gets it.
I would like to train my dog to do laundry and dishes.
Seriously, though, this is great advice. I'd like to begin working advance cues like on "find" in a few weeks when he's getting the basics down.
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Scenthounds really lap that stuff up.
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I must train my dog to find my keys. I'm forever misplacing them.
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I soooo know how you feel. I have a dish on the table where I usually place my keys but if I, for some reason, avoid the dish .... heaven knows where my keys are. Then if Tj or Sontaeruh, my ferret, finds the keys before me ... could - be - anywhere, lol.
Tj will retrieve the news paper from the driveway.
Cool thing is I never taught him that, he did that on his own. Though once I saw what was happening I did encourage it. He sometimes has to "find" the paper due to the paper guy throwing it in different places. I now praise him with his dog loofa toy, mainly because he started to playfully refuse to give the paper to me, lol. I think he thought of the paper as his toy.
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I'm the same way with my keys. There's a shelf in my hallway that I normally toss the keys on. Sometimes I don't though and those are the days that are interesting.I soooo know how you feel. I have a dish on the table where I usually place my keys but if I, for some reason, avoid the dish .... heaven knows where my keys are. Then if Tj or Sontaeruh, my ferret, finds the keys before me ... could - be - anywhere, lol.
Tj will retrieve the news paper from the driveway.
One of my neighbors has a retriever who gets the paper for him. I used to see him every morning when I was driving home from working 3rd. The door would open, the dog would go out, grab the paper and head back inside. I never did see the owner. They had a slow shutting screen door so the dog could be out and back in before the door shut.
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That's funny about never seeing the neighbor. I couldn't do that with Tj. I have to stand at the door, waiting on him because he takes Forever to make it back to the house with the paper. Tj has an EXTREMELY soft mouth so most of the time he drops the paper several times before he gets back to the house.
On a good note though, his soft mouth makes it so his toys last forever, LOL. He just turned a year old March 18th, and he still has all of his toys he's had sense he was a wee little pup.
On a good note though, his soft mouth makes it so his toys last forever, LOL. He just turned a year old March 18th, and he still has all of his toys he's had sense he was a wee little pup.
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Spunky used to know how to find my keys and bring them to me, but after awhile I just got really slobbery keys. I quickly trained her out of it.
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