Teaching “Drop It”

“Drop It” is by far one of the most important skills both my dogs have learned. A solid “Drop It” can save a dogs life in the event that they have gotten their teeth into something dangerous, or even just gross.

An important lesson I’ve learn when training my dogs is that each dog learns differently. This is easy to forget when you only have one dog. For this post I am going to focus on two different methods of teaching “Drop It”

“Drop It” is the verbal cue I am going to use in this post.

The Treat Trade

The first Method of teaching “Drop It” is heavily treat involved and great for treat motivated pups like Mugsy.

Start by having your dog leave something low value for something better. Yep ,you are essentially trading your dog at this point.

It is important to know what your dog views as low value and what they see as high value. Mugsy see’s cheese, homemade biscuits and salmon as high value whilst most of his chews and toys fall to a lower value. So for this trick I often rewarded with biscuits and cheese.

I both orchestrated situations where I wanted him to drop something, and took advantage of the frustrating habit of picking up miscellaneous object my puppy had.

To teach “Drop It” start by giving your puppy a chew or toy of lesser value. Hold up a treat at the same time as you say “Drop It”. The dog should want the treat more and drop the chew or toy in favor of the treat. As soon as the chew or toy is out of the dogs mouth Mark the behavior and repeat the command. “Yes! Drop it”¹Marking a behavior is when a trainer has established a specific word to use during training that tells the dog they have done the right thing and a reward is coming. Many trainers prefer to use a clicker in place of a Marker word. I use the word Yes.. Once you practiced with low value objects gradually increase the value of the object you are asking to trade for. A favorite chew bone or toy may require a bit of repetition and even an increase in high value reward to establish a solid “Drop It”.²This training method is not designed to rehabilitate resource guarding.

After practicing “Drop It” with treats enough times you should have established pleasant expectations from your pup when he drops a toy or treat on demand. At this point it is best to start phasing out the treat.

Start by having a treat on you but not in plain site and giving the command “Drop It”. When the dog Drops it immediately give the Marker word and pull a treat out giving it to your dog. The purpose of this is to start to establish less of a let’s trade relationship with “Drop It”. Bringing the treat in from out of sight should show the dog that good things happen when I listen to the “Drop It” command.

My favorite thing was to trade a tennis ball for a treat. This sets up nice habits for Fetch.

Once we had mastered “Drop It” in a controlled environment I began applying it to our walks. There were a few extra special “treasures” I had to bring cheese out for as a trade in the beginning. Mugsy really likes the olives that fall from the trees in our neighborhood. “Drop It” comes in extremely handy on walks especially when I really don’t want to reach into his mouth and grab his newest bit of “treasure”

“Drop It” is teachable, and a lot of dogs pick up on it very quickly. It is important to realize that dog training takes patience and consistency. If your pup isn’t picking this behavior up immediately don’t lose hope, keep working at it. This is a very popular method of teaching “Drop It” that worked for Mugsy and me, but that doesn’t mean there is one or even two ways of teaching this behavior. Keep working at it. If you’re really just not succeeding with this lesson then your dog might be more like Banjo. Banjo didn’t understand this lesson at all. I had to return to the drawing board for him.

Teaching Banjo to “Drop It”

Banjo wasn’t too keen on trading me, and he isn’t particularly treat motivated. For us teaching with toys and games of tug was key.

To begin teaching “Drop It” I initiated a game of tug. We got really into the game and then I just stopped pulling, I  gently pushed the toy into his mouth. At the same time I gave the command to “Drop It”.

Not only did this make the game dull as can be for Banjo, It also went against his instincts.

Prey in the wild does not just leap into a dogs mouth. It doesn’t feel natural to have food or toys pushed into the mouth. It is more natural for something to pull away from being eaten.

So this game became no fun and just like that Banjo let go of the toy.  I immediately praised him and repeated the command “Drop It”. Banjo is still learning his release word “Free” and his Marker word “Yes!”  So I swung the toy around reinitiating the game of tug whilst I gave the “Free” command.

Repeating the first step I gave the command “Drop It” and stopped tugging. After I repeated this enough times Banjo caught on. He realized the sooner he left the toy after I gave the command the faster the play resumed.

Banjo is at a different place in training than Mugsy, and he is more play driven than Mugsy. I’m not sure to what extent Banjo was previously trained. He knew Sit and Talk when I brought him home, but Down and Stay were completely foreign to him. For this reason I had to work with praise as a reward instead of a marker word for a little while with him.

A few days later when he better knew his release command and Marker word I was able to teach him to leave his swinging toy alone on command.

In my next post. I will cover “Leave It“. “Leave It” is great for preventing your dog from grabbing something dangerous whilst on an adventure.

How did you teach “Drop It”?