5 Simple Steps to Teach a Dog to Pick Up Items Off the Floor

For a proud owner, any trick that a dog masters is a source of delight and pride.  Training and teaching your dog to “roll over” and “play dead” are simple enough, but one of the things a dog could help you with is the mess around the house.  Whether the dog is responsible for it or you are.

Here is how you teach your dog to pick up items off the floor:

Step 1. Prepare a lot of treats and praises.  Any dog training should come with a lot of dog treats.  These treats, aside from serving as a reward for your dog, also serves as reinforcement for it and strengthens its behavior.  As soon as your dog does something that you want him to do, shower him with treats and praises!

Step 2. Choose a good training tool.  A rule of thumb is to get something that is unfamiliar to the dog, so that means its toys are out of the picture.  Use something that has no value to you, so it could get damaged or broken in the process of training and you would not care.  You could use a plastic glass, or an old wallet.  Knock it down to the floor, do not throw it.  This trick is not a variation of fetch.  Instead, you are telling your dog that something fell to the floor and it should pick it up.

Step 3. Call the dog’s attention to the old wallet on the ground.  Make sure it sees the wallet on the floor and then pick it up and put it into your dog’s mouth.  Then say the dog’s name and follow it up with the command, “pick it up.”  Repeat this several times as you pick up the wallet and put it into the dog’s mouth.  Your dog will understand that you want the wallet in its mouth.

Step  4. Make sure to praise and give your dog some treats at this point.  Your dog will realize that it has done something right and will continue to do it again for you.

Step 5. Move on to other items and repeat the same procedures.  You should also move further away each time.  Always call your dog’s name and follow it up with the “pick it up” command.  Expect to have a lot of repetitions of these steps with a lot of other items before your dog learns this trick.  In time your dog will get the idea that whatever item falls to the floor, it should be picked up.