Dogcharmer Tom,
I would appreciate it if you could tell me how to start teaching a dog to “Go find.”
Denise A.
Denise,
I love the question. It’s one of the favorite games a dog can play, which makes it easy to teach. Assuming your dog complies with the command “Stay,” have your dog sit and stay while aware of there being a treat in your hand. Then back away while facing the dog, keeping the dog’s attention on you as you place the treat behind a shoe or chair leg or whatever. Then say, excitedly, “Go find” the treat. You want success to build on success. The dog runs over and easily finds the treat where you put it, even though he couldn’t see it. Do that several times, slowly making it a little harder to find each time.
I tell my dog Paula Jean to lie down and stay in the kitchen, while I go upstairs and hide the treat in one of the three bedrooms or two bathrooms. Then I go back down and tell her “Go find,” and she charges upstairs, and has as yet never quit till she found the treat.
This skill set is fun, but also very useful in real-world circumstances. (Trigger warning: the following anecdote might be distressing to some readers.) Once, during a real search for a woman who had somehow wandered away from a mental institution in New Jersey during a bad snowstorm, my dog Michelle and a bloodhound kept sniffing around a big tree, at which point Michelle went up with her front legs on the tree. Up until that point, it was hard to see anything because of the blowing snow, but Michelle made it clear to look up. The woman had somehow climbed the tree and killed herself by hanging, a horrible lesson I never forgot.
So, when I play “Go find” with my dogs, I often hide the treat up on a chair or bureau, teaching them it’s not always on the ground or floor. Your dog will love the game!
Dogcharmer Tom
Have a question for the Dogcharmer? Write him at dogsrshelby@msn.com. Find him on Instagram @DogTrainingDiaries.