Teaching 'Hold'

I wasn't planning on teaching Olive the 'Hold' command, but we have been having a bad week with the delivery to hand so I thought I might try going down a different route to get there. Olive's delivery to hand has always been fairly good, but it is more a case of me catching the dummy off her in time, rather than her actually understanding that she is holding on to the dummy until I ask her to give it to me. I want to improve her pick up of the dummy aswell, which is messy (she is still very young so I haven't been too bothered about this), she tends to grab the dummy, and dangle it from one end bringing it back to me, or sometimes she will drop it and re-pick it up. She needs to eventually pick it straight up, get a good hold, and bring it straight back.

So yesterday I started by putting the dummy in her mouth, which she wasn't too keen on, I sort of expected her to be reluctant to hold it to begin with. Then I stroked under her chin praising her to stop her from dropping it. When her grip loosens and she goes to drop it I say 'ah ah' and she will keep a hold which is good. I was able to move my hands away and she kept holding the dummy. I gave lots of praise and repeating of the word hold. I found when I praised her she would get excited and go to drop it, bless her. I will try doing the hold with her later and building it up until I can walk around her and she holds it.

The big goal here is for her to be bringing the dummy back to me on a retrieve, and for me to say 'hold' and she will keep hold of it and 'present' the dummy to me.

Here she is holding the dummy...