on Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:33:44 GMT, montana wildhack
wrote:

We have to teach Nemo how to catch. She is totally clueless and she
lives with Bella, the canine catching champion of all time. We had to
teach Doodle how to catch, too.

Popcorn was good for diagnosis and it was good for step two, but step
one for us has been to get the dog interested in the treat and drop it
from about 1" away from her mouth. Lots of repetition. When you get to
2-3" away, try the popcorn. Popcorn allowed Doodle to understand that
she might have to move to catch something.

I need to try again--or assign that task to my daughter since she did get
her to roll over after I gave up on that trick. Today after less than 10
minutes of work she taught Roxy to settle (lay on her side), and she's
done it consistently throughout the day. My daughter's got a knack, and
seemed to really enjoy the training class today.

Starting off with tennis balls and smacking her (the dog, not the
daughter) in the face with them just didn't work for me, hehe. It worked
for my Shelties, but they automatically at least TRIED. My first Sheltie
could catch ANYTHING, he was amazing.

Do me a favor and post about this as you work with Nemo because I can use
all the help I can get on this one. It's not crucial, of course, but it
would be great to at least be able to toss her treats.

One thing I have been doing that I'm hoping will help, at least with
Frisbee, is to run with the disc in my hand, just out of her reach so she
has to run and jump to go for it. She does this all the time and will
really go for it (high jumps), but will not if I just toss it... not
until it hits the ground. Hrmph.

It'll be interesting to see how my pup will be. I've read that some
retrievers just aren't naturally into retrieving, and I know my breeder
is going to pick the male with the best show potential not retrieving,
because he is hoping to show him. My Shelties were not natural
retrievers, either, but it didn't take me long with either one of them to
get them fetching and catching. Roxy's been a tough case on catching
(but she'll retrieve for HOURS).

--
Lynne