# Teaching object names for retrieve



## Anne Vaini (Mar 15, 2007)

I've never taught a dog to recognize items by name, to be able to pick the correct object and retrieve it. 

For example, if I set keys and a water bottle on a table, how do I go about getting the dog to retrieve the object I asked for, not the item she prefers to retrieve, the one I asked for last time, or the one that that recieves the highest reward?

And any suggestions on naming objects? She's got:

Keys
Bottle
Cup
Trash
Book
Paper
Remote
Phone
Shoe
Sandal
Sock
Laundry
Blanket
Pillow
It - any unnamed object

Any advice for preventing confusion? How do I get these off of situational? Just drill the objects in every possible, unusual and unexpected way?

My goal or test for determining that she actually knows the names of objects is to put a dozen various objects in a basket and have her correctly choose and retrieve the object I ask for.


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

I've just always used the close aproximation to teach different items. 
I don't use the word "bring" because that's a competition command. I just point and tell the dog "get the paper", "get the keys", "get your leash", etc when it's the only thing around. In thinking about it I probably do give a "bring it here" till the dog understands the connection between "bring" and "get it". I don't know if I really put that much effort in it but it has always seemed to work. I know I can put the paper, keys, leash, my boots, etc on a bench and he knows what I ask for........he does make extra effort with his leash :grin: even though he rarely wears one. He knows it's a signal that were headed out.
I would separate the items on the floor before I started with a pile of things in a basket. Make it easy in the beginning! Then two objects in the basket. One the dog knows and one it doesn't. That makes the choice easy but it will have to make that choice. Advance to two in the basket that it knows, etc.


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## Lisa Maze (Mar 30, 2007)

What about teaching the dog to target to a laser pointer instead of lenghty list of command modifiers? Then you can just train the red dot on the object and ask your dog simply to "get it".

Lisa


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## Anne Vaini (Mar 15, 2007)

I really wish I could get her to target a laser pointer! That was my initial goal. She's totally oblivious and I'm out of ideas on that one.


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## Kris Dow (Jun 15, 2008)

I'm not sure if it'll be helpful, but our cocker spaniel picks up the names of her toys pretty quickly when we just use that name consistently in association with the toy. So any time we give her the toy, or while we're playing with her with it, we use the name. (I.e. 'do you want to play with ginger?' 'go get ginger' instead of just 'fetch', that kind of thing.)

To work with the laser pointer (and I totally respect that you're much more experienced than I am, so maybe you've thought of this) but could you try getting her to target something else, and then transfer it? I'm thinking something like rewarding her for touching the end of a stick, then once she's doing that reliably, add in the laser pointer focused on the end of the stick, and then take away the stick, but keep the laser pointer in the same place- operating on the theory that once she gets the idea that she should be paying attention to the red spot, because she gets treats, she'll then look for it.

It might also help to start with something that makes a larger spot than your standard laser pointer, to increase the size of the target?

Also, have you considered trying different colors of light? Maybe she doesn't see the color of the pointer particularly well?

Just throwing ideas out, anyway.


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## Jennifer Marshall (Dec 13, 2007)

I marker train this. I don't teach anything but the name of the object. I don't put "get the" in front of anything. It's just "Socks" or "Shoe" or "Pillow" etc. This way there is much less chance for confusion and the emphasis is on the specific object you are asking for.

I have the object and show it to the dog, with interest in it. Depending on the dog I may wiggle it around and make it exciting and offer it to the dog...not trying to keep it away from the dog, just make it interesting and induce a bit of prey drive without making the dog nuts. As soon as the dog mouths the item, mark and reward. I keep marking more mouthing up to the dog actually holding the item while you still have it in your hand. I tend to name it at this point, when the dog is consistently mouthing and is overall interested in the item. 

Once the dog is holding the item, I put it on the floor in front of me and point at it, and look at it and am just generally excited about the item. How excited I get depends on the dog. I don't want to make a dog crazy about the item to the point where it becomes another prey item that it wants to chew or shake or kill or tug with etc. As soon as the dog mouths the item, I mark and reward. Again with holding the item, and once the dog picks up the item, I move backwards a few steps in an excited manner to get the dog to follow me. If the dog just comes right to me with the item, great! I mark and reward. If not, I will mark a step in my direction, then two steps, 3 steps etc. I start with a short distance and work my way up to across the room, to just outside the door, to down the hall, in another room, across the house.

I've done this with different toys, with different shoes (my leather shoes or my tennies, my sandals) a blanket, my keys, my purse, the remote, my cell phone. There will often be favorite items that are brought back super fast and others that the dog navigates for a moment, like keys. But I put a leather tab on my keyring after the first few unsuccessful attempts to get my last dog, Cajun, to pick up the keys. I don't blame him, keys taste bad 

Just the way I've done it, I sort of winged it at first. I started off using "get the __" and found it would lead to a dog that grabbed the wrong item about 50% of the time. I'm sure it would work, I was too lazy to problem solve it and just trained the item name. I'd say the dog's name to get his attention, as soon as he looked at me I would say the item name. "Cajun..... Keys." and he'd get the keys.

The only problem I see is if you are training this with intent of the dog going to someone else after the training. Your shoes don't smell the same as someone elses, your keys are not the exact same as someone else's, your blanket will be different, etc. So while you will have a good basis to easily branch to someone else's items of the same type, there may still be some extra training. I've never trained it for anyone but myself with my own dog.


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

I'm not a fan of the laser pointer. The dogs that I''ve seen or had that responded to it become almost possessed for it. 
My grandkids used to see who could get our JRT to touch the cealing by running up the wall after it. :-o


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## Anne Vaini (Mar 15, 2007)

I had a laser crazy dog too. I can't use that result, so hopefully I can get her to notice it without going nuts.

I had an idea about training the laser target. Train at night/in the dark. (Why didn't I think of that before?  )


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## Julie Kinsey (Feb 10, 2008)

Anne Vaini said:


> I've never taught a dog to recognize items by name, to be able to pick the correct object and retrieve it.
> 
> For example, if I set keys and a water bottle on a table, how do I go about getting the dog to retrieve the object I asked for, not the item she prefers to retrieve, the one I asked for last time, or the one that that recieves the highest reward?
> 
> ...


Anne,

Naming and vocabulary are a huge part of Kayce Cover's SATS Bridge and Target training method. The way they are taught and the fact that cognizance is not only recognized but supported are probably what pulled me ever deeper into it. I hope she will chime in here, but will point out that it does not involve drilling or employing prey drive, includes meticulously well thought out and detailed proofing every step of the way, and results in animals who constantly amaze me in the scope of their understanding. As far as I know, there are really no unnamed objects save ones not taught yet.

Julie Kinsey


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## Anne Vaini (Mar 15, 2007)

Julie - I was hoping you or Kayce would speak up. I've been trying use what I understand of SATS and I must be doing something (a lot) wrong.


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## Kayce Cover (Oct 30, 2007)

Great that you are testing and experimenting. It is a process that requires proofing, and fluency on the parts of both trainer and dog.

I am currently working on materials to support these kinds of tasks, but they are not out yet. I hope you will keep an eye out for them.

Regards,
Kayce


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## Anne Vaini (Mar 15, 2007)

Well, moving away from the phase "get the (object)" really helped (thanks Jennifer!). Right now, I'm naming the object. If she needs further encouragement, clarification, I use the action word ("get it" "pull-pull" "push!" etc) as a bridge.

I haven't been working so much on distiguishing between multiple objects. Right now, I'm getting her into a pattern and am working on teaching situational things. I think this will be the most "bang for buck,"
even if she doesn't *fully* understand object names.

Kayce - a little interesting side note - my marker (TB) is totally overrided by - the sound of the door latching, for example, when closing a door. Cool!


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## Jennifer Marshall (Dec 13, 2007)

Yay, keep us updated Anne. Vids?! I will try to get vids of this once I get a camera that works right. Err. Well, ok to be honest.. once I can get someone that knows how to take video... because I can't. I will be changing the way I train this a bit once I get more into SATS. Loving it so far, Kayce!


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## Anne Vaini (Mar 15, 2007)

I have GOT to buy batteries!


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## Anne Vaini (Mar 15, 2007)

I am happy with Emma's responses to object names. I haven't tested it out much though. I kept with simple object names and only using the "get it" cue for unnamed objects or if she gets confused or distracted. 

Working on it situationally does work out OK. S

Some little things come up, but they're mostly cute. Like when I go to train her at lunch, it is our shortest, funnest session. She's all excited! When I ask her to get her dish out of her kennel for fresh water, she has to pass the front door where her equipment is. When she sees her prong, she HAS to bring it to me. lol Never seen a dog so excited about a prong collar before. She still follows a leave it, so I don't think it is a problem.

Here is a potential problem. I use object names for other commands. Like "chair" doesn't mean to fetch the chair, it means to put an item ON the chair. What if at somepoint she needs to drag a chair around. 

"Basket" either means to fetch the basket or to put something IN the basket.

She hasn't been confused (yet), but how do I explain this to her future handler to avoid confusion and so the handler knows how to clarify his expectations to her?


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## susan tuck (Mar 28, 2006)

Bob Scott said:


> My grandkids used to see who could get our JRT to touch the cealing by running up the wall after it. :-o


 
COOL TRICK!!!!! I wanna see too! :-D :-D :-D \\/ \\/


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## Bob Scott (Mar 30, 2006)

Anne Vaini said:


> I am happy with Emma's responses to object names. I haven't tested it out much though. I kept with simple object names and only using the "get it" cue for unnamed objects or if she gets confused or distracted.
> 
> Working on it situationally does work out OK. S
> 
> ...


Maybe to simple an answer...but
If the dog is given a command to put something in the basket I'm assuming it alread has something in it's mouth. If it doesn't, then the command would mean "bring". Just a thought!

Susan, that is definately NOT funny if Gam (grandma) is standing behind you while your LOL at the gkid's antics with the dogs. 
Gam didn't seem real happy about the scratches on the wall. Go figure! !! Wimmins!! :roll:
Pop (me) can get himself in deep "stuff" sometimes when it comes to the gkids. Gam keeps saying she's got 6 gkids in the house sometimes. I only count 5! :-k :-D  :-\" \\/


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## todd pavlus (Apr 30, 2008)

Those laser dots gave one of my gsd's a bad case of OCD. After that, she went bazerk after anything that flashed, reflected, or even shadows. Bad news.


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## Chris McDonald (May 29, 2008)

Anne my dog has always had a shoe fetish for some reason anytime a member of the family comes home he runs and finds a shoe or sneaker. Because of this there are shoes and sneakers all over the house that don’t match. So after watching you videos I thought I would use this to my advantage and get him to put the shoes and sneakers in the shoe basket by the front door. So it went like this: a few times a day for a few days when I saw a sneaker on the floor I would tell him “fetch the shoe” Fetch is pretty much his command to hold something followed by “in the basket” this ones new. Then I would walk him over the basket position his melon head over the basket and say “out” followed by a “good in the basket”. Some how I now have him relating to carrying these shoes as a positive and not necessarily getting them in the basket as the end all. I’m gona keep working on it but I just want to let you know I one of every shoe everywhere now.


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## Anne Vaini (Mar 15, 2007)

Chris,

Apparently it is possible to teach a dog to pick a pair of shoes out of a big pile or bin of shoes. Maybe you could teach your dog that! :lol:

Emma's seek-and-find is good enough that I'm not worrying about object names anymore. If she gets confused, she retrieves the leash (yep, the one attached to her collar) so I always know when to back out of it and HELP her identify the object to retrieve.

With seek-and-find, I have her cleaning up my son's toys in the living room. She puts the blocks on their table, small toys in their boxes, pillows and stuffed animals on the couch, and trash in the garbage can. Sweet! I don't want to give up this dog! :lol:


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## Chris McDonald (May 29, 2008)

Anne, your dogs making my kids look real bad! That sounds neat. I watched a few of you videos and it sound like there have been big improvements since then, and they were good. I can see training dogs to help people who need it being very rewarding. Maybe when I retire in about a 100 years ill look into it if if hae the skills by then. You know I think I’m gona need one of your dogs for myself in about 20-years. Anyway I have a dog that really needs to be doing something most of the time. So far the getting the sneakers back in the basket is back firing he keeps taking them out. There is one of each sneaker in the basket and one somewhere else garage, outside in the basement. One of my other great ideas was to have him fetch the Sunday news paper from the drive way and bring it to me at the door. But sometimes I just let him out and forget about the paper only to see him run past the kitchen window with paper flying everywhere. In two minutes he rips up the whole Sunday paper to the point I need to clean it up with a rake. When I get out there I can’t even say anything because he is so proud that he fetched the paper.


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## Anne Vaini (Mar 15, 2007)

OMG Chris. I can totally picture your dog shredding the paper. Too funny!

For depositing, I've have problems training other dogs to deposit to a basket. The dog wants to take it rught back out. These dogs also had chewy, stressed grips and did not retrieve well.

Emma has a CALM grip and no stress over retrieve. I am so thankful I did the drive building and grip games when she was a pup. 

I had already trained her to go to a mat. So I had her pick up an item, I sent her to the mat and had her out. I spent about 15 minutes on it. Then later, I asked her to deposit to a basket. I didn't do enough foundation work on it and that started off a big confusion and produced the poor behavior seen in the YouTube videos.

I need to get some new videos up there so I quit embarassing us. :lol: There are two new heeling vids. They're decent.

Emma works about as efficiently as your average 2 year old. :lol:


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