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How to get a dog excited about retrieving!


mrmints
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My ESS is coming along nicely! She is nearly six months and will sit, stay and (mostly!!) recall.

 

I can't seem to get her particularly interested in retrieving and I really can't get her excited about tennis balls. I can usually get her to bring back a tennis ball in a sock in the garden, but anywhere else and she'd much rather sniff around and eat grass. I certainly haven't been over doing the retrieving, once or twice a session, once or twice a week.

 

Now I know there have been a number of similar topics along this line but are there any tips for making retrieving REALLY exciting for a dog, or are some dogs just not interested, the end?

 

On a side note, I did throw her a squirrel on the weekend and that got her excited, but she had not interested in letting go!!!

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I had the same problem with my lab bitch so I used a friends dog with bags of drive for her to watch and that got her going but she also had no interest in balls or dummies till I tied a rabbit skin round the dummie and that worked for me no stopping her now atvb

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My ESS is coming along nicely! She is nearly six months and will sit, stay and (mostly!!) recall.

 

I can't seem to get her particularly interested in retrieving and I really can't get her excited about tennis balls. I can usually get her to bring back a tennis ball in a sock in the garden, but anywhere else and she'd much rather sniff around and eat grass. I certainly haven't been over doing the retrieving, once or twice a session, once or twice a week.

 

Now I know there have been a number of similar topics along this line but are there any tips for making retrieving REALLY exciting for a dog, or are some dogs just not interested, the end?

 

On a side note, I did throw her a squirrel on the weekend and that got her excited, but she had not interested in letting go!!!

 

The squirrel was jumping the gun put it to the back of your mind and don't repeat it until the dogs ready and delivering well. I think it was Joe Irving? who wrote of a top dog he owned and trained that never showed an interest in dummies and such that he ended up training with Rabbit but moving straight to dead is very risky. I have never had this even with running dogs that had no inbuilt desire to retrieve, though I have always started such dogs real early in the house with rolled up socks and the like in puppy play training

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