How To Teach The Dog The Pick-and-carry Exercise

Exercising with your dog when you take him for a walk is a good technique to get him exhausted and sleep at night, and it also lets you rest too. There is nothing more annoying than a dog walking around the house all night and making noise. Today we’re going to talk about a technique that will help your dog get tired. We’ll talk about teaching your dog the pick-and-carry exercise.

In order to get your dog to master the exercise of picking up and bringing, you must master 4 orders or commands:

• Search;
• To take;
• Bring;
• Release.

Let’s look at how to teach your dog to recognize each of these commands.

fetch/get

These are two words that your dog will easily recognize, as they awaken their hunting instinct, something innate in them since their ancestors: the wolves.

Just as a prey awakens your senses and, therefore, your interest, we must do some exercises so that your dog awakens his interest in the object we are going to throw. We can play with the object ourselves, get him used to the object, run it on his muzzle or pet the dog with it. This will make the animal familiar and easier to teach the pick-and-carry exercise.

Once he’s familiar, we can start testing. It may be that, at first, the dog runs after the object, but when it gets to it, it turns around without grabbing it and not caring. What can we do in this situation?

We will have to teach our animal that it is fun to play with the object, let’s say it’s a ball. We can go after her and get her ourselves. Drop it to the ground in front of him and collect it when the animal approaches. This will awaken the competitive side of the animal, which will want to grab you before we do.

Bring

Once your dog has learned to catch the ball, the hardest part comes: getting it. In order for him to learn this phase of the exercise of picking up and bringing, it is essential that he already knows how to obey the “come” order. But even if your dog already knows how to obey this order, several problems can arise:

• The dog grabs the ball, but releases it at your call;
• Brings the ball but wants you to chase him while he keeps the ball in his mouth;
• Go to the other side with the ball in your mouth.

But how to solve these problems and make your dog learn to pick up and bring? Well, in the last two circumstances, never give in to the animal’s wishes . Don’t run after him, he’ll take this as a joke and won’t take your orders seriously. He must understand that he has to obey his call. Be firm.

At the first hurdle, you won’t be able to do much to solve it yourself. The best thing is to create a competition with the animal. They always want to win. So ask for help from a family member or a friend to compete with your pet and thus learn the most important step of picking up and bringing.

Like? Very easy. You must throw the ball and make your friend or family member run, as well as your dog, after it. Certainly the dog will arrive first and when he sees that his friend or family member wants to grab him, he will do it first. If not, your friend will. He will grab the ball and bring it in his hand, to give it to your dog. Praise your friend in front of your pet so that the pet sees that this was what you expected from him. Repeat this several times.

release

Now we come to the last step: let go. This step is the end of the pick-and-carry exercise. Don’t try to be the one to make the animal drop the ball by taking it away from him. You must teach your dog to obey.

You can bring your hand closer to the ball, making him see that what you want is for him to give you the ball. If your dog already knows how to give the paw, he will quickly understand this gesture, or else, he will have to be patient to complete the game of catch and bring.

You can give him some food, as he will value it more than the ball, and it will make him drop the ball very quickly, or you can also possibly do it with your dog’s favorite toy. In any case, we recommend that you always be patient and do not get angry or yell at him, otherwise the animal will associate the game with something negative and will never want to try it again.