Archive for July 6th, 2008
Stuff Dogs Like – Fetch!
Fetch is a game usually played with a dog. An object, such as a stick or ball, is thrown a moderate distance away from the animal, and it is the animal’s objective to grab and retrieve it. Many times, the owner of the animal will say “Fetch” to the animal before or after throwing the object.
Well. Sure. That’s the way its supposed to be. The person throws something and the dog runs after it and brings it back to the person. If you’re lucky, the dog will even drop it at your feet. Some dogs like to do this over and over and over again. Just ask my sister. She had a English Springer Spaniel by the name of Riley once. Riley was a little “off” in his mental capacity, but he did like to play fetch. On one occasion, my sister threw the ball for the dog 198 times in one session. If her pitching arm didn’t conk out on her, who knows how long that dog would have run back and forth for that treasured yellow tennis ball.
Clover really likes to do a water retrieve. Throw a stick or ball or bumper into a body of water, and she’s on it. This dog has chased down an errant frisbee in the Irish Sea and in Loch Lomond in Scotland. (She’s well-traveled.) But on land? It all depends on how she’s feeling at the moment. She prefers to chase a soccer ball and if she can get a hold of it, she’ll fetch that and bring it back. She had a favorite ball for fetch that a another dog at the dog park decided he liked a lot and took it home with him. She hasn’t been the same since.
Cosmo’s training has been spotty. My bad. He’s such a well-behaved dog, having absorbed a lot of his good behavior through osmosis from being around Clover. (Only the good things, thankfully.) He will chase pretty much anything you throw mostly because he likes to run, not that he likes to fetch and retrieve. The biggest problem with Coz is that he won’t bring the thrown item back!
Last year, we spent a week at a super place in North Carolina with a cabin on a lake. Cosmo would only go so far with the fetch/retrieve in the water. Mostly, he would wait for Clover to swim out, retrieve the ball/bumper/stick and when she got back to the edge of the pond, where Cosmo lay in wait for her, he would pounce on her, knock her under the water, wait for the item to pop to the surface. At that point he would grab the item, jump out of the pond, and run towards me as if he was going to return it to me, but most often he ran off into the field hoping someone would chase him.
Little thief.
