Are you doing the bite work or pillow work with your dog or do you have a club decoy doing it? You need to do a lot of simulated lift offs prior to the actual lift off. We call it "run byes". You come up to the dog, say it's name and grab the collar and lift with out taking the dog off. This gets the dog used to you coming up and grabbing the dog. You may be progressing too fast with a 9 month old dog as well.