One of the first dog training tasks that people want to learn about is how teach a dog to fetch. Playing fetch with sticks in the park is a lot of fun for both dog and owner. Even in the yard, you can encourage the dog to have a lot more exercise by throwing something for her. If you can’t take much exercise, then you just stay in one place and let your dog do all the running.

But because many people doesn’t know how to teach a dog to fetch in the best way, they make a lot of mistakes. This should be fun and not that difficult just remember that in the beginning the dog doesn’t know the rules.

When you throw something they’re already familiar with, like a toy or a ball, then many dogs will run after them. The idea that they need to bring it back to you, drop it and let you throw it for them again is what they will not realize. It’s just likely they’ll fetch their toy and start playing with it.

It’s best to start in a small and enclosed space when you’re trying to teach your dog to fetch. You do not want to be in the park where you might have to chase the dog around and around, tiring yourself out before you can get the toy back from them. Your yard is not the best place either. A dog can do too many interesting things outside.

What you need is a placed where the dog will be focused on you. In most cases the best place is inside the house, maybe in a hallway. Close the doors of the rooms so there will be no distractions and your dog will have nowhere to go but back toward you.

Because of this she may do the right thing by accident and bring back the toy to you. She’ll begin to pick up the idea of the game when you reward her.

Want to know another thing that you can do to make it easier on yourself when you are starting out with how to teach a dog to fetch? Instead of just using one toy, bring all of the dog’s toys that you can find. This means you can throw many times before you start having to go collect everything up.

Before throwing the toy, make sure she’s interested in it. You can do this by waving it around her nose. In the beginning, praise her for just chasing after it.

A dog can be called back to you if it’s already been trained to come when called. Often times you will find that at first, she drops the toy before coming. You may praise her for coming back, but the treats should come later when she actually brings the toy back with her.

The toy has to be right and the one you just threw, not a different one you threw before. When you’re playing this game in the park, you wouldn’t want her to bring back something different.

You may still have trouble even if most dogs learn this game easily and if this happens you can borrow a friend’s dog who loves to fetch. Reward the other dog for bringing back the toys and dropping them at your feet and let your dog watch this. With this, it will be easiest to teach a dog to fetch if it seems she doesn’t want to learn.

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