I am teaching my 2 year old gs Luna,yup the same dog I called
the "puppy from Hell" the same dog that would endlessly attack
my arm playing ball that horrible dog that turned out to be
a wonderful companion who no longer acts like a jerk, well
I am teaching her to pick things up from the floor for me.
I started with a hollow bone, the kind you put peanut butter in
or treats I then ask her to get the bone, give me the bone and
then I put in the peanut butter and give it back. However
sometimes she drops the bone and when I repeat for her to get the
bone she wines and crys but she does get it. I have been ignoring
the vocalizing. Should I be? She acts like I've asked her to
cut off her tail or someting she seems frustrated that she
dropped the bone or frustrated that I insist she get the bone.
any suggestions.
Luna and I say "Thanks"

It's important to make double, triple sure your dog knows the command - my dog gets whiney when he's only like 80% on something, and I'm not being clear enough on the last 20% . Beyond that, my dog also gets vocal when he gets bored (for lack of a better word). If I ask him to do the same thing in repetition, he gets a little frustrated - it's like he's complainaing, "you just ASKED me to do that, like 3 times - and I DID it! Why do I have to do it AGAIN??!!" I work through this by changing up the exercises, going through other commands, then coming back to the thing he was tired of doing. I don't know if that's necessarily the right thing to do, but it works for me, and I'm not looking for high performance, just that my dog is enjoying himself.

~Natalya

Natalya: You put it better than me. That is exactly how luna
acts when I repeat the command. "complaining" She always get the
bone, but she complains. We just started this task and I too
am not looking for high performance just something new to learn.

Betty, from the POV of Marker training: the dog performs the command -> you mark it(do you?) -> you give the dog the reward (bone with p/b). And then you are asking her to give the reward back so that she could do more repetitions? Why not just use bite-sized rewards for each rep and give her the p/b bone at the end?

Ana: Thank you that seems to make more sense. Right now I am
only asking her to get the bone one time. I don't repeat the
"get the bone" for a few hours.

I know what you are talking about, my dogs bring their Kongs for refill

Because this bone is also a reward it might be easier for the dog to receive it than to give it back. It is also a non-interactive reward, unlike a tug. I think we don't expect any back-and-forth with food usually. It may go easier if you use a random item, not related to food or toys, so that the act of picking it up is the only thing you are working on = lower the distractions.

I completely agree with the previous posters...that's really good advice! I just wanted to chime in with my experience/young dog situation. Mine can whine himself into a tizzy when he just can't quite figure it out. We think the task is so simple it should be obvious...but I don't think it's obvious to a dog, necessarily. At least not until he's done it like a hundred times with predictable results. I found that reducing the verbal pressure, such as using an encouraging, "You can do it!" as nutty as it sounds, calms my guy's nerves and lets him concentrate better or re-focus on trying.

Additionally, you can try making the mental leap even smaller by having sessions where you sit next to her on the floor, put a lick or two of PB on the bone, hand it to her. When she is satisfied that there's no PB left, you can encourage her to give it to you, wipe another small bit of PB on it, give it to her, over and over. I spent a lot of time doing something similar with my puppy and I think it paid off in more than one way. (Outs, gives, brings, etc.)

Ah, one other quick thing that seems to help me is making sure to really use my eyeballs on the object of interest. I look at pup, shift my focus quite obviously to the pot o' gold, then back to puppy, during a learning 'hurdle'. Hehe. I enjoyed the humor in your post.

The foster dog I worked with did something similar when I told her to go to bed. She would go to her bed, but would occasionally give me this look and whiney-growl like,"Why do I have tooo?"