Playing strawberry catch

I wanted to teach Dixie to catch a frisbee from virtually the day I got her (nothing wrong with aspirations). Knowing she could not go from zero to frisbee queen overnight left me to devise a plan. I had to start somewhere, so I started with to start with small pieces of strawberries.

Dixie acquired a taste for strawberries early on, so I figured, what the heck? I felt that teaching her to catch strawberries was an excellent precursor to learning how to catch other things. In this case, a frisbee. I needed to motivate her to want to watch something fly through the air and catch it with her chompers. Still, that did not answer the question of how to start. I knew that I had to teach her to keep her head up (no head-down floor scrounging for this one), and open her mouth to catch them. Baby steps.

I started by having Dixie sit on my left side while I fed her treats from the palm of my hand. I waited until she was nice and hooked on all the free treats. I wanted her to love them, and she did.

After a few days, I had her sit in front of me while I all but spoon-fed her. If you try this it helps to use a cue such as ‘catch.’ I used ‘catch’ because it seemed like it I could use it to have her catch balls and, yes, frisbees.

Remember that your dog’s success in catching things will depend on your ability to toss things to them. I can not hit the broad side of a barn, so when I was lined up and ready to toss, I made an effort to stare at her nose. I don’t know why, but it increased my success rate of hitting the target (her mouth).

I started tossing small pieces of strawberry in her direction from about a foot away. She missed a lot at first, and then there was the magic moment when she caught one. Yay! There was hope. Once she got good at catching from a foot away, I increased the distance by a foot. I continued doing this until I was tossing them from ten feet away. It took about two weeks.

In time, Dixie was catching strawberries like a champ so it was time to move on to frisbees. I started with a soft Kong puppy version and built up distance as I did with the strawberries. The power of treats played a role – catch the frisbee, get a treat. Miss the frisbee, no treat. She caught on quickly and over time she became quite the frisbee catcher.