Leash!

This afternoon I thought it would be fun to teach Pyper to get her leash. I have been having some troubles with Pyper leaving the ring during trial so I thought it would be good if I could get her to pick up her leash @ the end of runs. This way she would have a job to do before she could leave.

So previously we have done some work on "pick it up" so teaching "leash" was actually kind of easy. I started by clicker training her to touch her leash. Then I clicked if she touched it with her mouth. Then I clicked if she picked it up with her mouth. Within about a minute she was picking it up and bringing it to me. Good Dog.

Next step was to send her to the leash and get her to bring it back. At first she didn't really like to carry it but she go over it. :) During this entire exercise I was rewarding with food rewards. Just the way Pyper likes it.

The last step was to get Pyper to tug on the leash so it would be rewarding for her to bring it to me when I don't have food rewards. This was easy since Pyper already knows how to tug. We played tug on the leash for a minute or so. I strung all the steps together to get Pyper to go get her leash, bring it to me, and tug!

What fun.