Friday, August 21, 2009

Training Your Human: Playing Fetch

By now, my faithful followers know two things about me: I am a retrieving fool and I love-love-love my tennis balls. If it were up to me, I'd play fetch for hours at a time. For some reason, my Family is not as enthusiastic about fetch. They'll throw the ball maybe ten times and think that's the end of it. So I've had to resort to training them to get them to continue playing...humans can be so lazy! In case your human needs some guidance too, here are my tried-and-true tips:

1. When they're vegging on the sofa in front of the idiot-tube, plop down nearby, head-on-paws, and give a couple nice, loud sighs to get their attention:






2. If they ignore you, mosey on over, place your head on the sofa and give them your most pitiful, oh-woe-is-me expression. Extra points for adding a good whine or two.





3. If they still ignore you (amazing how slow humans can be, huh?), make a big show out of finding your ball. The more ruckus you make in the process, the better.




4. They still haven't gotten the hint? Time to bring out the big guns: deposit said ball repeatedly on one of their body parts. Extremely effective if ball is covered in saliva.





That should do it! It works on my Family every time.


Oh, and don't forget, if they throw the ball where you can't reach it (my human has the worst aim ever), employ the pitiful look-whine combo to ensure they'll go get it. Remember how well this worked when my ball rolled under the stove?


Good luck training your human! Remember, they have very short attention spans (poor things), so keep your training sessions short but frequent. They'll get it eventually.

16 comments:

  1. thanks Sedona - I try some of those things - mommy usually plays - daddy is another story!

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  2. WOW, what a great training guide! And despite the laziness in actually playing fetch - I do need to commend them on fantastic pictures to accompany your training process. :-)

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  3. Those are some really great tips! Thank you,Sedona. Have a wonderful weekend, my friend.

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  4. Hi Sedona,

    I agree with all your suggestions. They sure work for me!

    Wags & wiggles,
    Bijou

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  5. Oh Sedona!

    Fur a young pup, woo have SOOOO nailed the looks necessary!

    Woo will go far!

    Hugz&Khysses,
    Khyra

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  6. Good tips, Sedona!

    Adele will keep barking when she sees lizard to get the human attention.

    Licks,
    Adele, Vincent & Bella

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  7. Great job training your hoomans, Sedona! I´m training mine too! Thanks for sharing!
    Have a grrreat weekend!
    Thor

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  8. Great tutorial! I'm going to keep this handy in case my mom gets lazy!
    LUv,
    Dave

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  9. We know just how you feel. We get all set for a good half-day 'trieving and the humans run out of gas! Finally we told them they can sit back in a lawn chair and lob our ballie fur us☺

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  10. Hi, Sedona!
    Thanks for the tips! I am going to follow them and I will tell you how it goes, ok?
    Kisses and hugs
    Lorenza

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  11. Sedona you are such a smart one. Great tips. Jack knows lots of those too. Very funny!

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  12. Excellent post, Sedona! You have that training down, girl! I love the photos you have added to enhance our understanding. Will this be a series on training humans?
    Snuggles,
    Twix

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  13. Well woo sure have a lot of fun. Hi, I'm MayaMarie, the Husky in the Window. My Mom is the Happy Hearts Cookie Baker. We are so glad woo won some cookies. My mom wants to know if have any food allergies or issues. So let us know at gerri.du@yahoo.com.
    Husky Hugs, MayaMarie

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  14. Sounds like you have a pretty good handle on this issue Sedona!! I'm not much into fetch myself, but my big brother Mason ( a lab) has a good technique too - he'll keep bringing more balls, toys ect until someone pays attention. My mom has been know to find herself surrounded by a mountain of them!!

    Snorts-
    Brutus the Frenchie

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  15. our human is actually very good she plays with us sometimes more than we would like - so maybe our human can train yuor human

    Woodrow - Sweetie - MJ

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  16. Hi there Sedona!
    We like your site and your training tips here too. Do visit us in our piappies world when you're free,
    Thanks!

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