A little too smart

[NewbieShepherdGirl]

I am so glad Sasha is smart. She's easy to train, and really seems to love it when we work. She's gotten pretty good at the basics (though come still needs work), so I thought I'd teach her to play fetch. I would love to be able to take her outside and let her burn off some energy in the front yard, and I'd gladly throw her toy for however long she would like to do it. However, currently Sasha just looks at me like I'm an idiot when I throw a toy and tell her to get it. She'll go find it if I hide it, but I get the distinct feeling that the princess believes she's above playing fetch lol!

So, I thought to myself the other day, "There has to be a way to have her understand what it is I'm wanting her to do." I know in my heart of hearts that this is a communication problem that starts on my end. She really likes to play, but she's apparently never had people play with her, and so until recently we've only been able to play doggy style games (tag, wrestling, etc.). She'll now play tug some, and she'll go find stuff, and I KNOW she'd love fetch if she could just understand what I wanted.

This led me to do an internet search on how to teach fetch. Some of them seemed a little out there, but I found one that I thought might work. It teaches that you teach the dog "take it" and they are to take an item from your hand, and then you teach "give it", and eventually you're farther away when they give it to you, until you can play fetch. I thought that this might work, and actually I was more worried about teaching her "give it" because I thought she'd want to play tug. Nope. She does take it like a champ, and then throws it on the floor and waits for her treat, eyes aglow. So I guess we're going to have to try a new method because my smart girl has stumped me lol!

Just thought I'd share this fun little training bump. If any of you have any experience with a situation like this feel free to chime in and let me know, otherwise just sit back and laugh at the girl who has never even found a college class to be too hard, doesn't go to class half the time and pulls good grades, doesn't hardly ever open a text book, almost never studies, and yet is outsmarted by the dog lol!!!