The Frisbee

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

How to teach your dog to catch a Frisbee (condensed version):

1. Roll the Frisbee on the ground and get your dog to retrieve it, like a ball.

2. Begin tossing it in the air lightly in front of your dog until he gets the idea to catch it and bring it back.

3. Begin throwing it like a Frisbee for short distances until he learns to go get it and bring it back.

4. Continue to throw it further and further until he is a champion Frisbee catcher!!

Aussies are known to be great Frisbee dogs. Perhaps Ninja is the exception. Perhaps I'm just a crummy dog trainer. Either way, the Frisbee thing ain't working for us.

Throw a ball and Ninja will bring it back. Most of the time. Usually he'll bring it back about 10 times and then take off with it into his backyard "lair." Then the game is over.

But the Frisbee? He grabs it, he wants to play tug of war with it, he'll sit on it. When I toss it he watches. . .and lays down. Or he'll watch me toss it in the air and let it hit him in the head. I was afraid that he'd get scared of it and not want to play, but that hasn't happened. Probably because I'm tossing it lightly in the hopes that he'll snatch it from the air.

He likes the rolling it on the ground part, just not the sailing through the air part. DH says it's because I can't throw a Frisbee properly. I toss, it goes- what more is there? He won't catch food you toss in the air either. So we keep trying. And trying. . .

Oh, an update on the rat that started the whole rat poison incident. We smelled something foul in the kitchen last night. The poor rat had died in a crevice between two of my kitchen cabinets.

The bad news is that DH's hand would not fit in the crevice to pull the carcass out. Guess whose did? As I donned those HUGE yellow gloves I told him he owed me big time for this one. But it was that or a late night trip to Walmart for a new shop vac to extract it out. Either way, it had to come out last night. No question.

I still cringe over this one, but I just stuck my gloved hand in, pulled it out and tossed it in the trash bag and DH whisked it away. Then I spent about an hour in the shower trying to scrub away the disgusting memory. Blech.

I wonder how Ninja would like a cat for a friend?