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As for retrieving with KJ… well, first of all, previously she did not fetch😄. She would run to the toy, grab it in her mouth, and just stay there. So we started practicing on a leash, and I would throw the toy very short distances after the “free” command. When KJ grabbed the toy, I would pull her toward me. Of course, she would turn her head away from me to keep me from taking it, so to encourage her to bring the toy and let go of it, I started inviting her to jump up on me with the toy — I would crouch down and encourage her to put her front paws on my knees, which also made her face me with the toy.
Once we got that down, I slowly began removing the encouragement to jump, until I was standing upright and KJ, with the toy in her mouth, would bump my knees or look at me. That’s when we started adding the “fetch” command instead of “free”. Another command I use is “Bite” (what means rather “take it”) when I’m holding the tug and want her to grab it. I sometimes also use “bite” followed by “come”, sometimes without “come” 😀
When we’re alone, we can play a decent game of fetch, but when there are other dogs around (even just Koka), KJ goes back to her old pattern — running to the toy, grabbing it, and either staying where she is, running off with it, or taking it over to another dog and initiate play. So when other dogs are present, I avoid using the “aport” command to prevent “breaking” it, and just throw the toy with “free.” Since resource guarding has started to become an issue recently, I’m not going to even attempt teaching her to retrieve around other dogs (except Koka) until it’s 100% safe.
Second thing — she’s not always interested in the items I throw. Often during fetch, if she finds something “more interesting” on the way, like a plastic bucket, she’ll bring me the bucket instead of the toy. If I throw a stick in the forest, she’ll often bring back a different one. I don’t reward her for that, but I also don’t really have a way to encourage her to go back and get the correct item (so I have to send Koka for it :D). When she was little, it was even more pronounced — I’d throw a toy, and without taking a single step, she’d just pick up the first thing near her feet and get interested in that instead of the object I threw.
I’m attaching a short training video — I managed to get her to tug a little longer. Watching the video, I realize I had more opportunities to let her take the lead. In the video, Koka is next to us the whole time, and KJ clearly loses focus — she drops the tug sometimes (which doesn’t usually happen when we’re alone). After “free” command, both ran to the tug but neither picked it up (so far there has been no aggression between Koka and KJ over any resources). You can also see that when I let KJ win (released the tug), she walked over to Koka with it in her mouth and tried to initiate play with her, instead of coming back to tug with me. I also noticed I unnecessarily lifted her once — I probably just got too carried away in the play.
Any ideas on how to further improve the fetch a bit? What else could be improved? Dog nerds!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTndWAk5cfY
