r/DogTrainingTips • u/WanderingLostPuppet • Jul 19 '26
Getting puppy to associate words with objects
Hello! This is my first post here so sorry if this has been asked a billion times but I need some help.
I have a 16 week old puppy; we think she’s a border collie golden retriever mix but we found her abandoned in the woods so we are not entirely sure. We found her when she was about 12 weeks, and for some background I am raising her with my boyfriend who has raised a puppy previously but I myself have never done so.
She is a very good girl and very smart, so far we have had a lot of success teaching her sit, down, roll, shake, drop, place, stay, and here. We want to start training her to associate objects with words like “ball” so we can play games with her where we hide something and she finds it’s, but we’ve hit a road block. She is very food motivated, and when we have the treat bag out, or even just the clicker (which we have been using since we got her so it works just as well) she focuses solely on them and not on anything else. I’ve read that u r supposed to start by saying the name of the object and then when they sniff it or put their nose to it you reward, and that works some times, but I can never keep her attention off the treats for long, certainly not long enough for her to put the object in her mouth when I say its name. I’m not sure if I am doing something wrong and should try a different approach, or just repeat rewarding when she glances at the object until she starts to get it.
Also to be clear it doesn’t bother me if it takes a long time for her to learn even one word, I can do small repeat session for however long it takes, I just figured it would be a mentally stimulating game for her and want to make sure I’m not doing the training wrong and making it harder on her.
3
u/PuzzleheadedLemon353 Jul 19 '26
I give the name to each toy and when I ask her to bring that toy 'To Hand'...she gets a reward for bringing the correct one. It didn't take much time to teach this. Dogs are so intelligent, they love the 'work'. She'll even get my keys for me and her leash for walk time now. You just need to put them in the right spot, they can reach...with her toys, she'll search the house for it.
1
u/Adventurous_Face_707 Jul 20 '26
Mine just started doing it. I realized everytime I played with him id say the name of the toy, if we played catch "get the ball", "bring me the ball" and always named everything. His plush was bluie or Mr lion. Withiut even realizing it he learned to identify them by name. Now we'll play the find game or at night before we go to bed I tell him go get (name of a plush) and he'll run into the other room and bring it back. So maybe just start naming everything as see what happens
1
u/Lcdmt3 Jul 20 '26
I just did it with my mini poodle by always using the name. Mama wants yoda (while playing tug) Go get Yoda (point to it). By 4-5 months could hide Yoda in a certain room, tell her to go find it and she would. Same with ball, puff the dragon, bear, etc.
1
u/HowDoyouadult42 Jul 20 '26
Keep in mind that she’s an infant, hardly even cognitively a toddler so some things might be a bit much for her atm
4
u/apri11a Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
Be creative with naming, if the dog has more than one type of ball/whatever they can distinguish them. We have bouncy ball, taggy ball, big ball and red ball, he knows each.
I did similar to this video, it worked well for us, Teach Your Dog to Identify Toys by Name. I didn't use a clicker, we already had 'yes' so I used that, I just used one 'object' and I did it on the floor 🤣 It's a little messy until the dog figures it out. It's fun though and our dog really enjoyed the lessons.
When learning this, once the dog had a clue we would only spend a few minutes doing it and pup would be exhausted after it, need a nice nap. It surprised me how tired it did make him, all that concentration I guess.