Training The (Non-Chompy) Calm Hold (Patreon)

Denver is a chompy little guy without a natural calm hold, so I've avoided training the formal hold until now to give him some time for his brain to develop. After working on my chin rest for the last few months to the point that I can use it for cooperative care behaviors, I was finally ready to start combining it with hold training.

Note: if your chin rest is not super strong, this will not be an effective method.

The basics of this method is to combine a "take it" cue (dog grabs onto object) with the chin rest, following immediately and marking for stillness and increasing duration from there. Then quickly fading the chin rest hand from the equation.

I was trying a new piece of software on this one and unfortunately it didn't capture my screen sound for some reason so I've included my commentary version, along with a clean version with audio. But just assume I click right before I reach for food (and then you can watch the included "raw" video after the commentary).

There's a few different ways to train the hold, but this one seems to be working best for Denver.