I'm clearly doing something wrong and am hoping someone can shed some light on what it is. I've been throwing a ball for Molly to chase, pick up and return to me. The idea is to get her to understand and hopefully enjoy finding or chasing something and returning it. I started when she was smaller and she just picked it up, sat down wherever she was and started chewing it. No encouragement would cause her to bring it to me. I thought perhaps she was too young, so stopped doing that and concentrated on basic training. The past few days I've tried again, with unfortunately exactly the same results. Today she has chewed and destroyed a ball. If I move either toward her or away from her she dances around dashing back and forth as if its all a sort of 'chase me' game. I know its something I'm doing wrong because I had exactly the same situation with our springer years ago. I've tried to find some clues in the training articles but they seem to be aimed at those who have gone beyond this stage
Some dogs will naturally retrieve but loads will do exactly what Molly does, and want to keep it for themselves. One way to do it is by starting with the delivery to hand. Reward her for touching a ball in your hand with her nose, then with her mouth, and do this a lot until she realises that holding the ball at the same time as you holding it is really rewarding. Gradually introduce a tiny bit of distance - you can do this by holding the ball with your other hand just a couple of centimetres from your "receiving" hand - she gets rewarded for holding the ball and pushing it towards your open hand. Again, slowly slowly build up the distance until you're a foot or so away. You can change it about a bit, depending on how quickly she's picking up the concept, by moving the ball around a bit, so it may be a little to the side etc. Then, sitting on the floor, put the ball on the floor in front of you, and she should pick it up and deliver it to your hand. Again, ever so slowly making it a bit tougher so she can eventually pick the ball up off the floor and put it in your hand while you're standing up. Then it's just a case of increasing the distance between you and the ball. To start off with, make sure you do it in a place with no distractions, like a hallway. If necessary, you can pop her on a lead so she can't wander off.
Thank you very much snowbunny, that's exactly the sort of help I was hoping for. I'll start that way, rather than what I've been doing.
