Postponing Delivery-to-hand

I think that many retrievers are not crazy about giving up the article they've retrieved, and maybe it's true of other breeds as well.  The dog may bring the article back to show you, but I've found that they often don't want it taken away. In our household, the Goldens often greet family and guests at the front door with some object in their mouths, and it looks like they're offering a gift — totally cute — but if you reach for the article, the dog turns her head away.  They're showing you something, but they're also clearly communicating that they do not want to give it to you.

As a result, I think training delivery-to-hand in a young retriever can be counterproductive.  That is, I imagine that every time you take an article from a young dog, you may make her less likely to bring you the next article.  Traditional retriever trainers may not notice this effect much because the ecollar is such a powerful tool for strengthening recall that it masks and overcomes the difficulty.  But for positive trainers, who train without such tools, the reinforcement history that sets the probabilities for future behavior is more difficult to weight in favor of returning to the handler with the article, and taking the article from the dog adds weight to the wrong side of the scale.

Therefore, I'd be inclined to set aside the requirement for delivery-to-hand for the first several weeks or even months of the dog's early experience retrieving, without losing focus on strengthening the dog's reinforcement history for coming all the way back to you (see The Fetch Game).

To be clear, I'm not saying delivery-to-hand isn't an important skill.  Of course it is.  I'm just suggesting that a retriever's skills need to be layered on top of one another, and delivery-to-hand may be a later layer than coming back with the article.

Accordingly, if you're going to postpone delivery-to-hand, do not take the bumper when the dog gets close to you.  Just get control of the dog by catching the line she's wearing, and then lead her to the placement for her next retrieving opportunity.  She'll quickly lose interest in the article in her mouth, dropping it to the ground, and you can go ahead with the next rep.

Having your dog retrieve without delivering to hand gives you a chance to build great motivation for coming back to you with the article she retrieved, without having that motivation diminished by you taking the article away from her.