What Is It?
Here's a dictionary-like definition: Force-breaking is a structured training procedure in which you teach your dog to hold and carry an object on the command Fetch (or Hold), to release it on the command Give (or Leave it or Out or Drop) and finally to reach for and pick up the object on the command Fetch.

"Structured" means that you follow a fixed series of training steps. First, your dog learns to accept and hold the object. That done, he learns to carry it. Next he learns to reach an inch or so for it. Then he learns to reach farther and farther for it. Finally, he learns to pick it up off the ground.

Initially, the object should be a "training buck," which is a 12-inch piece of 1.25-inch wooden dowel with legs on both ends to hold it up off the ground. After taking your dog through all the steps with this buck, you repeat them with various retrieving dummies and birds.

Beginning with the step in which you teach your dog to reach for the object, you use mild force to induce him to obey the command Fetch. The most commonly used methods of force are the ear-pinch and the paw-squeeze. This force teaches your dog that he must reach and that he must pick it up.

Why Do it?
Most experienced retriever trainers routinely force-break their dogs for several reasons. First, it insures reliable delivery to hand. The non-force-broken retriever often drops birds rather than delivering them. This is especially aggravating in water work, where the dog drops the bird on the shoreline to shake water from his coat. A force-broken retriever normally won't drop birds, but even when he does, he'll pick them up again on the command Fetch.

In multiple marks, reliable delivery to hand improves the dog's marking by smoothing the between-bird transition. The force-broken dog delivers each bird at heel and then focuses on the next bird to be retrieved. The non-force-broken dog may play various games with the bird, tossing it up, dropping and picking it up, lunging after it and so on. These not only waste time, but they also dim the dog's memory of the birds remaining to be retrieved.

Force-breaking also establishes a framework for dealing with two nasty mouth problems that may crop up at any time, namely, hardmouth and stickiness. If the dog has been force-broken, curing these problems is easy. However, the various methods sometimes recommended for curing a non-force-broken dog (nails driven through a dead bird, and so forth) have one thing in common: They don't work, at least not for long!

Finally, field trial trainers use force-breaking as a basis for certain blind retrieve lining and casting drills, like "driving to a pile," which is an "anti-no-go" drill.

Force-Breaking History
Just as they borrowed the blind retrieve from herding dog trainers, retriever trainers borrowed force-breaking from pointing dog trainers. Back in the 1880s, pointing dog trainer David Sanborn developed force-breaking to teach elementary retrieving to bird dogs that have little or no natural retrieving instinct. Since that's a common failing among pointing dogs, especially the long-tailed types, his force-breaking technique became popular among his peers rather quickly. The Sanborn method is slow and gentle because pointing dog trainers have always been concerned about style and what they call "class" in their dogs.