Hard mouth, part 2

Earlier I spoke about hard mouth with a promise to share a technique or two to bypass formal force training to repair the hard mouthed dog (or the dog that doesn’t want to bring it to you).

I do not advocate this technique for you or your dog, it is what I do on rare occasion if needed.  I have multiple techniques that I use and it varies with each dogs personality.  I have many years of experience and use modern, safe and humane tools.  Use this technique at your own risk.

I’ll preface this with a note that this is a dog with a lot of field experience and birds shot over it.  Don’t do this to a pup.

Here is one technique:

I go back to the early days of teaching the dog to ‘come’.

For a couple of weeks  I only work this dog on the come command.  To the point that the dog just does it without thinking.  The dog must come running to me on ‘come’ and be happy to get there.  I start with a check cord and vibration for praise.  I later blend in very low level stimulation with the ‘check’ so he knows both mean the same thing.  Vibration is only praise for a job well done blended in with stroking the dog shoulder to flank.  I never use it with stim.

Once he knows both mean the same thing (the check and low level ‘nick’) I move on to just using the low level nick.  The SPT 2432 that I use has 50 levels, much more than other collars.

I use the nick and the come command over several lessons though the dog is coming to me just fine.  This low level nick is nothing more pressure than someone tapping you on the shouldler to get your attention.

If you have a collar with less than 16 levels, don’t use this technique!  Your collar will probably be too low on one setting and too hot on the next.

A couple of weeks pass and now I move on to the retrieve.  I am portraying a dog that loves to retrieve and is hard mouthed and/or doesn’t come immediately when called in from the retrieve.

I use the same easy tone of voice and same low level ‘tap on the shoulder’ level stim when I ask the dog to come to me with the object being retrieved.  The dog has learned to report immediately in earlier lessons.  If it doesn’t, you can repeat the command and give a simultaneous low level nick.  9 times out of 10 the dog will no longer think of chewing or delaying his arrival and report immediately.

I set this up with 2 weeks or more of just working on ‘come’ as outlined.  If you don’t, the dog will associate the nick with the object and spit it out.  He must understand the nick means to report to you immediately.  REMEMBER, I am using a collar with 50 levels and have many years of professional experience.  If you do this, you are doing this at your own risk.

If you attempt this and do it wrong, you will undoubtedly end up having to perform the force retrieve or trained retrieve method.

Obviously you can’t use this technique for dogs that have zero desire to retrieve anything.  They require the trained retrieve (force retrieve)

Dave