Hi,
Friends of mine made a big mistake with one of their dogs. They they tried to break the dog using the forced retrieve, and now the dog will not bring back the dumbell over the jump or A-frame at all. He won't even bring over a ball. The dog will fetch and retrieve the ball and dumbell if they just throw it around for fun,but once the dog sees the jump or A-frame, forget it. The dog will jump over the jump over and over again, and walk on the A frame with enthusiasm, he just will not bring back any object. They have tried several different approaches, like using a different word for the "brings" command, using different objects to retrieve over the jump, lowering the jump to only one board, etc. Nothing has worked and now they are thinking maybe they really have to break him super hard with the forced retrieve to get him to do it. Thinking what the poor dog will have to go through makes me shudder,so I was hoping someone might have some alternative suggestions? Thanks

It sounds like this dog is a soft dog. No one can tell you if this problem is fixable without seeing the dog work. With this said if they want to try and work the dog motivationally they should get the DVD I did on the motivational retrieve http://leerburg.com/106.htm To turn this around will take the patience of a saint though.

With this said - a soft dog does not take as much force as one would think - I have a DVD I did on the Forced Retrieve. If these people have someone who really understands force they should have that person do this training. The important part of force training is that once or so a year the dog needs to have a session of force to reinforce the work. Its a mistake to think that Force only needs to be done once in the dogs life.

While Ed is right that no one can really say without seeing it, I have my 2 cents to offer. I made a mistake in training my dog over a year ago. I did not know about food drive and used strong correction when I should have taught her drive focus.

The similarity I see is that when I have treats, my dog is in drive, trying to please me, but also very wary of anything that could cause a correction. It's a bundle of nervous energy, doing everything but what is asked.

In the situation you described it sounds as if the dog is fine with the jump, fine with the retrieve but not both. If this is corrct, I would do drive building with a prey object and do into my arms with the dog standing over one board of the a-frame. Going back to step one - trust. When the dog relaxes - and it may be a period of time, or many short sessions, then add a board, have the dog hold the dumbell, just gradually and slowly building up trust and getting the dog closer to the task. You can test the dog intermittantly to see how is is comming along. If the dog does not perform the task, call him back - avoid setting the current behavior more in his memory.

Yes - heavy compulsion would work, but the dog will always suck at the retrieve and would probably refuse to even start to perform it. I wouldn't go that route.

Do the trust-builing/drive-building and get Ed's DVd on the motivational retrieve. And good luck to your friend!

You can also try going back to the start, and work on placing a piece of PVC in the dogs mouth, mark it and keep shaping it until the dog can hold it calmly for a few minutes. Then after that you could probably try working this exercise on one side of the jump (no boards)and have the dog bring it to you a really short distance say, 1 or 2 feet and go from there. Using force is one way, but I would rather lose points than risk blowing it up completely.

I would agree that it sounds like your friend's dog is a soft dog. Have they tried backchaining the behavior using more positive methods? They would need to start w/ shaping a pick up and hold, then a return from increasing distance, then gradually add in the jump and a frame again, finally adding the go out last.

It'll take time, but taking several steps back helped me retrain the heel w/ my soft dog when she lost confidence due to corrections.

A clicker might be helpful here, since it can be used to mark the smallest behaviors and seems to make the shaping process go a bit faster.

Thanks everyone for your advice. I have forwarded the info to my friend. If we train tomarrow I'll ask him what he plans to do. I'll still check this posting if anyone else has advice too, and provide an update at some point.
Thanks again.