I'm just going to very quickly touch on the stays and then talk more about the retrieving and scent articles.
If your dog had a pretty solid stay before and is going through a stage of breaking the stays, it may just be a plateau in training and if you get worked up about it you can actually make it worse. What I do at times like this is stop. The dog and I take a break from that part of training and I go on to other things (or maybe just spend a week or so playing and not training). I can't let the dog's lapse mess up everything else we've done and if you harp on it (not saying you do, but some people really get upset about their dogs not continuing a previously learned behavior) it can have long term ramifications. So I have learned to just step back a bit, not worry about it, go back later and use lots of happy reinforcement when the dog does it right.
Now, the dumbbell! I love retrieve and scent work. Since I have chows, it's a real challenge at times so I've had to learn a lot of different methods. I, too, have chosen to step away from forced retrieves (although that's what I was originally taught and used).
The best advice I can give on retrieve work is to take the time to build all the steps of retrieving. Use lots of positive reinforcement and go through the steps of the dog glancing at the dumbbell (to the left of the dog's head, to the right, above, below), then moving toward the dumbbell, then touching, then mouthing, then taking, etc. This will probably go VERY fast for you, but these building blocks are extremely important. Then you teach the dog to hold it (with a hold command) until you actually give the "give" command. I want my dogs to hold it while I touch their chins, their cheeks, scratch behind their ears, etc. I don't want a dog to drop it when I reach for it. I should be able to tap the ends of the dumbbell lightly or even tug on it a bit and have the dog hold tightly to the dumbbell. When I can do this, then I feel my dog has a good grasp of the "hold" command.
I also teach the dog to pick the dumbbell up off the floor while standing directly in front of me. During the original training, after the dog has learned to take the dumbbell from my hand, I gradually ease the dumbbell to the floor and then gradually ease my hand away from it (with the dog being reinforced throughout all the steps - picking the dumbbell up with my finger touching it, picking it up with my hand six inches away, picking it up with my hand a foot away, etc.). I want to be able to place the dumbbell on the floor, stand up straight, tell the dog "take it" and have the dog pick it up for me. Then "hold it" means the dog will hold it while I touch his head, etc.
One of the things that I find is very helpful is to look at the dumbbell when I ask for the dog to pick it up. The dog learns to cue in on that as well as the verbal command. Then, when I get to the point where I'm actually sending the dog out after the dumbbell, if the dog comes back to me and drops the dumbbell, I simply stand there silently staring at the dumbbell. Sometimes I even lean over a bit and make my stare very intense .. *L* .. what I want is for the dog to think "oops, better pick it up fast!". And if I've done the proper training of the building blocks for the retrieve, the dog WILL pick it up and then I can stand up straight, smile, say "hold it" and do the touching of the dog and the dumbbell before giving the "give" command.
There are so many facets to the retrieve and if you break them down and teach them all properly, they should all eventually come together into a beautiful, precise, happy retrieve.
Scent articles: I use a modified Janice DeMello "Around the Clock" method where I put squeeze cheese on the article. I have a couple of sets of articles I use, one is a practice set and the other a competition set. In the practice set, I have dumbbells that are specifically set aside as the cheese ones. You can use whatever you want, however, in place of the dumbbells. In AKC you need to have both metal and leather articles. In CKC you need to also have wood.
There are a huge number of steps to the DeMello method, so I'll just give a short summary. Basically you scent an article, put a small line of cheese on it, and set it out. Dog is on leash. You send the dog to the article, go WITH the dog and when dog gets to the article you put one finger on article to hold it still and you praise while the dog licks the cheese off. As soon as cheese is gone, the "take it" command is given and then you back up so that the dog can do a front with the article in his mouth.
Then you take an unscented article, put it out, scent/cheese the first article, put it out a few inches behind the unscented article, send dog and again go with dog, hold down article, praise, do retrieve once cheese is gone. You add another unscented and go through the same steps, and continue this way until all the articles are out there and the dog is working through the articles to find the scented one.
There's a method to how DeMello puts out the articles to teach the dog to go into the group of articles and scent in a circular pattern in order to check all the articles. It IS important that the dog realise that the behavior is not going in and grabbing the first article that smells a bit right - the dog needs to check all the articles and bring the one with the highest amount of your scent on it. In a set of obedience trials, you may have to use the same articles three days in a row and there's no guarantee that the judge will choose the same articles for you to scent each day. So the dog has to differentiate between a newly scented article and one that may have the previous day's scent on it.
And, of course, once the dog has learned to go out and work through the full group of articles, you gradually decrease the amount of cheese on the scented article until the cheese is gone and just the scent remains. This takes some time - you want to be sure not to push the dog too quickly because dogs can get really unsure of themselves on this exercise. Building the confidence is really important. You also have to stop any cues that the dog has found the right article ... it's very easy for a dog to fall into a "I'll bring it to you only if you tell me it's the right one" mode. So getting the dog to understand that the reward marker will only happen once the article has been brought all the way to you is important too.
Along the line, it's not uncommon for a dog to go through a "let me grab the first convenient article and run back for the reward" stage. At that point I usually tie the articles down with clear fishing twine so that only the scented articles are free and the dog is basically self-corrected. That way I can avoid the dog losing confidence by coming to me with an article and not getting a reinforcement.
I hope that helped! I was going to start Khana on the scent articles this winter but we were having too much fun with freestyle. I think I'll wait until we get the CD done and then we can start playing with some of the utility exercises.
Melanie and the gang in Alaska