Training to catch a frisbee???

[zoomer]

Is there any way you can train a dog to catch a frisbee? I am trying to get Georgia to. I don't know if running around in circles, with the frisbee in your hand, waiting for her to get it out of your hand is a good method? Any other suggestions?

[BC_MoM]

What kind of frisbee do you have? Hard or soft? I suggest soft... most dogs prefer them to hard.

Also, don't play with the frisbee until she gets bored or tired and wanders off.. play with her for a couple minutes and put away so she looks forward to playing with it next time.

[zoomer]

I have a soft frisbee... one of those squirrel ones. Thanks, you've been awesome help to me

[BCollie_Kelly]

I'm going to echo Jess. Both of my borders prefer the soft frisbees to the hard ones.

As for catching a frisbee, I'll tell you what I did with my Rebel. You wont believe me when I say this, but when Rebel was younger he showed no interest what so ever in the frisbee. We would throw it and he would just look at it and then run to find a tennis ball. Now he jumps over 5 feet in the air to catch them.

First you have to get her interested in the frisbee. Does she like to play fetch? If she does great! What I started off doing was just throwing the frisbee and having him bring it back to me. As soon as I saw a spark of interest with him, I began to throw it no longer then a few feet of so, so that he could catch up to it and be right under it. That led to him at least trying to open his mouth to try and catch it.

Once he got the hang of catching it when I threw it short distances, I slowly increased the distance I threw the frisbee,[ still lower to the ground, not too high-- by it being lower to the ground, he just had to jump straight out in front of himself to catch it]

As he became better at catching it that way I gradually started throwing it further and higher. By playing frisbee with him, I've notice he has gotten *alot* faster-- always getting there to catch it.

Now I have a dog who is completely nuts for frisbees

Here are a few pictures of him with his frisbee now;

[BC_MoM]

^ SHOW OFF.

[Tollers-n-Dobes]

I did the same think as BCollie_Kelly described and it didn't take long as Tango was obsessed with retrieving and jumping from the start but a lot of that is her breeds, my last Rottweiler Echo took quite a while to teach but it did work. And, just because this is a frisbee thread, I thought I'd post a couple of Tango's frisbee pics (although, they aren't very good quality thanks to my camera).







Good luck with Georgia!

[Lori Jordan]

I find with my dogs they have to be interested in it ,but im sure you could just through one out in the yard and see how the dogs reacts,with mine i triend the frisbee you would throw it ,theyd watch it land and walk the other way ,But Tennis balls OMG you cant even say the word and they go CRAZY!!

[zoomer]

I'm going to echo Jess. Both of my borders prefer the soft frisbees to the hard ones.

As for catching a frisbee, I'll tell you what I did with my Rebel. You wont believe me when I say this, but when Rebel was younger he showed no interest what so ever in the frisbee. We would throw it and he would just look at it and then run to find a tennis ball. Now he jumps over 5 feet in the air to catch them.

First you have to get her interested in the frisbee. Does she like to play fetch? If she does great! What I started off doing was just throwing the frisbee and having him bring it back to me. As soon as I saw a spark of interest with him, I began to throw it no longer then a few feet of so, so that he could catch up to it and be right under it. That led to him at least trying to open his mouth to try and catch it.

Once he got the hang of catching it when I threw it short distances, I slowly increased the distance I threw the frisbee,[ still lower to the ground, not too high-- by it being lower to the ground, he just had to jump straight out in front of himself to catch it]

As he became better at catching it that way I gradually started throwing it further and higher. By playing frisbee with him, I've notice he has gotten *alot* faster-- always getting there to catch it.

Now I have a dog who is completely nuts for frisbees

Here are a few pictures of him with his frisbee now;

Thank you so much Kelly for your time, I am definetly going to do that and lets hope I'll get her to jump like your beautiful Rebel!

[wolfsoul]

I started getting Visa into frisbees last year in an effort to make her good enough to enter the flying disc competition this year. She hated the plastic frisbee, she was afraid to catch it in her mouth. So I bought a soft one. I would throw it, but she would just wait for it to land and then pick it up. So since we are avid clicker trainers, I had her stand in front of me and I tossed the frisbee near her and clicked and treated her for every time she caught it. She caught on well, and tried to catch it every time I threw it far. Hopefully we place in the competition this year.

[ParNone]

Go Rebel and Tango! You guys look awesome, skying for the frisbee!

With my Collies, I first taught catching skills with a soft stuffie, then moved to a soft frisbee and finally a harder frisbee. I've gotten a few emails about how I trained Oz and Gull, so I put together a quick lil' video. Here's the link: Teaching Frisbee

Par...

[Kfamr]

Ki has always been a catcher but, we worked on catching farther and farther. Now, she's learning to catch HIGHER. She has many type of frisbees but prefer a Flippy Flopper from Wal-Mart out of all types. She HAD 5 of them but we are down to 4 - she lost one at the beach.

[Ravette]

I wish my dog would lean to CATCH!!! Shes almost 2 now and I still throw treats to her and they BOUNCE off her head *rolls eyes* Any ideas?

[jackie]

I wish my dog would lean to CATCH!!! Shes almost 2 now and I still throw treats to her and they BOUNCE off her head *rolls eyes* Any ideas?

My Bo is like that, I have just excepted he is a bit slow in that area.

[ParNone]

Ravette:

I wish my dog would lean to CATCH!!! Shes almost 2 now and I still throw treats to her and they BOUNCE off her head *rolls eyes* Any ideas?

Treats can be hard for some dogs to see. Gull has never been able to catch treats, although I eventually did discover he could catch Popcorn, maybe because it's a lot lighter color then most treats.

I find starting with a soft stuffie to teach catch works really well. It's big enough to see, but soft enough that while they're learning if it bonks'em on the nose, it's no big deal.

Gull's not exceptionally coordinated, fast or can jump high, but he's gotten really good at catching a frisbee. And he started out with treats bouncing off his nose too, so he's proof it can be done.

Par...

[lisahumphreys882]

Ravette:
Treats can be hard for some dogs to see. Gull has never been able to catch treats, although I eventually did discover he could catch Popcorn, maybe because it's a lot lighter color then most treats.

I find starting with a soft stuffie to teach catch works really well. It's big enough to see, but soft enough that while they're learning if it bonks'em on the nose, it's no big deal.

Gull's not exceptionally coordinated, fast or can jump high, but he's gotten really good at catching a frisbee. And he started out with treats bouncing off his nose too, so he's proof it can be done.

Par...

My doggie can catch popcorn and some toys as well...but struggles hard to catch the frizbee, although he did catch it once. I have a hard frizbee though.

If anyone knows where to buy soft frizbees i would greatly appreciate it, thanks