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I checked recently and KJ will turn 8 months old in mid-May.
I also noticed those moments you pointed out, but the fact that I even managed to encourage her to pull backward instead of just downward feels like a win to me — thanks for the tips! I had a string attached to the tug before, but KJ got more interested in the string than the tug itself…
As for the retrieve… it works, but not in the presence of other dogs, and sometimes I feel like she just gets bored of it and would rather do something else. She doesn’t have the same insane drive for chasing a ball like Koka, but maybe she just needs more time.
About that last video in your post — I watched it some time ago and even wrote out the full chain to teach KJ step by step, but I failed… If the item wasn’t moving, she had zero interest in it, and if she did put it in her mouth, there was never even a second to mark proper holding — she immediately turned her head away 😅 We really probably did about 10 training sessions like that and she didn’t manage to hold the object in her mouth for a second correctly, so that I wouldn’t get nervous we did it differently. I told to myself that she’s just still too young and too wild for full retrieve chaining, so I tried approaching it from a different angle.
She actually does much better retrieving a ball than a tug, probably because the ball keeps moving. She can bring it to my hand 10 times in a row, no problem — unless there are other dogs around, or she’s just not in the mood for that kind of play. I never use any pressure when we play fetch… I made that mistake with Koka. I used to get frustrated when it didn’t work out perfectly and ended up damaging our bond because of it.
Koka is amazing – I could throw her a ball for an hour and she would still chase it or look for it in the woods. But usually during retrieve she stops two steps away from me, drops the ball, and then comes closer. Sometimes she’ll hand it to me, and sometimes she’ll do that a few times in a row, but I can see in her body language that the act of giving it directly to me stresses her out. I’ve just accepted that I made a lot of mistakes with her (she is my first personal dog, and before FSDT we did an obedience course in “police style” school), and now she gets anxious when it comes to releasing something into my hand. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy playing — so I just take the extra step, pick up the ball, and keep throwing it. Or I’ll encourage her to grab it again and bring it those two extra steps (which she often does, as long as I don’t give any formal command — I just open my arms wide, smile at her, and that’s enough). As long as it is not a problem for both of us and we are able to enjoy it I do not pay special attention to this point of training with Kok, which, however, I would very much like to improve with KJ 😀
I’m sorry about Stormy. I recently heard a heartbreaking sentence: “You know what the hardest part of having a dog is? Saying goodbye.”
I’ll watch the rest of the videos tomorrow when I have more time. Thanks again for all your help!
