First encounter with a dumbbell

During this week there has been quite a lot of discussion about retrieve and its teaching on a mailinglist I'm on and that inspired me to introduce the dumbbell to Riva.

I haven't started a formal retrieve training with him yet but I have been encouraging some behaviors that will help in it in the future. Like carrying things and bringing them to me, either to play with or to exchange to a treat. One of the "rules" is that I will not pick up things from the ground, if Riva wants to play he has to pick the toy up and offer it to me. Then we can play. Another one is that releasing a toy to my hand on cue will (usually) result in tossing another toy for him to play with. This makes teaching him a release cue easy because he is not resenting giving up his fun toy but instead anticipating the continuing of the play. In addition to the release cue ("kiitos") I have been pairing a cue ("ole hyvä") with him taking a toy that I offer into his mouth.

So with this in the background I took out my lightest dumbbell (about 400 g). I held it in my hand and told Riva "ole hyvä" and he took it in his mouth and started to walk around with it all wiggly. I praised him lavishly for carrying the dumbbell, eventhough he didn't really bring it to me just paraded around with it. He dropped the dumbbell a couple of times and I stopped praising him to which he reacted by picking up the dumbbell and I of course continued praising him. Then as he came to me again I took the dumbbell with "kiitos" and we played with his cotton rope toy for a while. The second time I offered the dumbbell to him I started to walk backwards and he followed me with the dumbbell in his mouth. Some more lavish praise and a play with the rope ended the session. I was tempted to try more but I guess I'm learning something since I had the good sense to stop it short and sweet.

I think that's enough for now and for his age. His hold of the dumbbell was good, solid and no chewing. I will continue reinforcing the same things as before and we'll get back to training a formal retrieve after he has grown a bit.