After many training sessions of shaping this behavior, we finally have Chief's first piece of artwork...and yes, it is going to be framed!! This whole process has had many small steps of learning specific skills, such as just holding a paintbrush. Who would have known that getting a retriever to hold something in their mouth would be so difficult, but actually it is.
When you have a dog, like Chief, who is very "mouthy" with toys, asking him to hold a paintbrush for a long period of time was very hard. We started with him taking it from my hand, and when he would hold for a second, he would chew the holder. So, that method didn't work. I decided to teach him just to hold objects, so many sessions focused on this behavior alone. Next, I had to decide what would be the best type of thing for him to hold in his mouth. The paintbrush alone was too small, so I tried a tennis ball (WRONG idea!!). After discussing this with professional trainers at Texas Hearing and Service Dogs, I learned my rookie mistake. We switched to a piece of foam that OTs typically issue to increase the diameter of handles for utensils, and that was the key!! This was something he could sink his teeth into but that wouldn't be something he would be interested in tearing up. It was perfect.
After many sessions of making the paintbrush "hot", I then began to add the cue "get your brush" for him to pick it up. I would toss the paintbrush across the room and have him retrieve it to encourage him to want to walk with the brush in his mouth. This then turned into "over here" cue for him to approach the canvas. The next chain of behavior was "get your brush/over here/touch" which translates to picking up the brush, walking to the canvas, and then touching the brush to the paper. The end product was a few strokes of paint on a piece of construction paper..Chief's very first piece of artwork.
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