I first met Willow when she was around 14 weeks young. We began training her all the foundations, and her guardians were great at taking onboard my training advice, following instructions, and giving Willow their time to progress. A few months later, while out on her walks, Willow decided that she wanted to pull to pick up discarded items – face masks; tissues being her favourites! Firstly, where all dog behaviour is concerned, you must ask ‘why’? Before we can change the behaviour, we need to understand why they are doing it in the first place. Did she want to hold something in her mouth like many Labrador Retriever type breeds would? After trialing some other safe items, it didn’t seem so. I soon figured out that initially what started off as curious puppy behaviour, soon turned into ‘finders keepers’ mentality. As a puppy, when Willow picked up something to investigate it, there was a rush to remove it from her – she didn’t understand why, but once removed, she received a treat for the ‘safe swap’. Did Willow start collecting items just to get treats? It’s very possible! So, we put a training protocol in place to help with this. This was one exercise called a ‘pattern game’. When Willow saw something that she wanted, and we noticed her eyeing it up, we counted 1,2,3. We had conditioned 1,2,3 to mean ‘check in with the humans for something tasty’ – the key to this exercise was to start the counting before she grabbed the item. ‘1’ meant the game was starting, ‘2’ meant give me eye contact, and ‘3’ predicted the arrival of a reward. So now the reward was coming for checking in with the humans instead of picking up a dirty item, instead of the reward coming from dropping a dirty item. While counting, you’re still walking, so you’ve got a chance to get 3-9 steps away from the item, and then it’s forgotten about! Win-win!

After many weeks of training, and of course, many failed attempts, Willow’s desire to collect items eventually left, her check-ins strengthened, and her guardians can now walk knowing that she’s safe.