Training Tip/The obsessive ball dog.

Have you ever visited a friend and their dog happily greets you with a tennis ball in its mouth?  How cute!  You take the ball and throw it for the dog.  The dog races away and before you know it the dog is back,  harrassing you to throw the ball again.

Guess what?  You were just conned.  There is a reason why the dog is one of the most successful species on earth.  They’ve figured us out.

 Some dogs will obessively bring things to us to throw for them because they like to chase things and they have figured out that almost every human will throw the darn thing for them over and over.  If the human  doesn’t  throw it right away even better!  I love surprises and I don’t have anything else to do.  I can keep trying all day long!  Eventually the human will throw the ball.

By throwing a ball for a dog that presents the ball to us we are letting the dog control the game.  By trying to get rid of a nuisance dog by throwing the ball we are simply reinforcing the behavior.  We are actually doing a really good job of creating the nuisance dog by throwing the ball on the dog’s demand.  Get it?

So what to do?  Playing fetch with your dog is really fun and good for the dog, as long as you control when the game begins and when it ends.  If your dog falls into this catagory pick up all toys and only give the dog access to the toy when YOU want to.  When the game is over take the toy away and give the dog a signal that the game is over.  I just show two empty hands to my dog and he knows I’m not going to throw the toy again.  If the dog picks up things on his own like sticks and tries the same behavior you have to discipline yourself and others not to throw the object.  Ignor the dog.  Eventually the behavior will disappear.

My dog loves to retrieve balls, frisbees etc. and I use them in training all the time but he has never, ever tried to intiate a game of fetch with me because he knows it won’t work.  The game must be controled by you.