Playing fetch with your dog is a good idea for a bunch of reasons. It burns off lots of monkey energy. It lets dogs exercise the chase part of prey drive. In Lilly’s case, it also lets her exercise the gathering instinct since border collies are a herd fetching breed more than they are a driving breed, like our Australian shepherd pal Pitsch. But, maybe the best part of playing fetch is that you can practice three training cues in the process.
1. Fetch (or whatever cue you use … we say “Get it”)
2. Come (and who doesn’t need to work on that?)
3. Drop It (or mine, or whatever word you use to get the dog to give up the toy)
We use Drop It because it’s a very useful cue for dogs who grab things they shouldn’t. I’ve actually gotten Lilly to put down baby bunnies with DROP IT. Handy cue too, if you have a dog like Ginko who thinks everything is food. We’re always telling him to DROP IT when he grabs something he shouldn’t.
Think if it this way. DROP IT is a good backup plan for when LEAVE IT fails.
We’re nothing if not realistic over here at Chez Champion of My Heart.
So, if you’re already playing fetch, why not throw these cues around and get a little training in while you play?
Thanks for the info! I’ll have to try that out.
If the dogs drop the toy too far from me, I shrug and say, “I can’t reach it,” and they usually will bring it closer. I keep doing that until I can reach it, then will throw again.
The trick is to stop the game before she wants to quit. One way to build enthusiasm is to play the game Leslie McDevitt suggests in her book called something like Give me a Break.
You play or train with lots of enthusiasm and rewards for like 30 seconds, then you sit down, tell the dog to take a break and wait. Usually, the dog is so excited that she will throw some behavior at you to restart the game. As soon as she does, you play (or train) again with lots of fun and treats, then give another break.
That’s so smart. I should have taught that too because now it’s nearly impossible to get either dog to hand me something. Sometimes, I won’t throw again until Lilly or Ginko puts the ball on my lap (if I’m sitting down), but there often is a LOT of frustration for them when I ask for a different criteria.
I use “give” and have been using treats to make the exchange because otherwise my dog drops it a foot away from me. It’s a work in progress. Haven’t figured out how to deal with her just running away with the toy and refusing to bring it when she’s tired out and had enough.
Great ideas!
I’ve added one more. My dogs have a ‘drop it’ cue but my back hurts if I repeated pick up the fetch toy from the ground. So, we have a ‘hand’ cue for placing the object in my hand.
When I had major back surgery, I built on the fetch game to get one of my dogs to pick things up off the floor and place them in my hand. It was, literally, a back saver!
Good ideas. We have the ‘go get your toy’ when we toss it and ‘bring it here’ to get them to return to us; but, we don’t say, ‘drop it’ because that’s what they do as soon as they reach us. Of course, only two of our four actually fetch anything. Lucy gets her toy and keeps it. Gus rarely plays with toys; but, when he does, he plays solo. Thank goodness Casey and Tommy are fetchers…we love playing it with them! Enjoyed your post.
Just eery timing. I haven’t had time to read blogs for a couple days.
You’ve either read my latest post, or you’ve got eerie timing! I JUST blogged about teaching Marge to fetch. It’s been fun and it’s definitely put a dent in her energy. It’s too bad that she might not ever enjoy it to the point that I don’t have to stand there and click/treat every time she brings the item to me. But we’ve had a good start.