Because your Border Collie dog is so intelligent, it is fun to teach it lots of things as part of playing together. Once you your Border Collie has mastered the basics of sit, drop, stay, and come, you can teach it more advanced and fun things such as how to fetch a ball. This is fun, and you can advance it over the years to where your dog will fetch your slippers for you....

The first thing you need to do is show your dog what you want it to do. If you show your dog in the right way, your dog will learn to fetch a ball quickly.

Teaching your Dog to Fetch

You will need a friend to help you, some treats and a ball.

Step 1. Ask your dog to sit and you may need to hold your dog by its collar to stop it naturally chasing the ball and your friend.

Step 2. Throw the ball and tell your friend to ‘fetch’. Use your friend’s name as you tell them to fetch the ball. For example, say “Johnny, fetch”.

Step 3. Your friend will chase the ball and hold it up in triumph when they get it to show your dog they have the ball. You will probably find your dog naturally wants to chase the ball, and is completely excited and unable to sit still. Do not let your dog go and do not make your dog sit still or reprimand it. You want your dog to get excited about chasing the ball.

Step 4. Tell your friend ‘bring the ball’.

Step 5. Once your friend comes back with the ball let your dog go. Take the ball from your friend and excitedly carry on yelling ‘yes, yes, Johnny got the ball’. Give your friend a pat and give him lavish praise.

Step 6. Repeat these five steps several times until you think your Border Collie has the right idea.

Step 7. Repeat the steps again, but now tell your dog to fetch the ball using the same procedure you did with your friend. If you change any of the methods you used with your friend, you will confuse your dog.

Tips to help your Fetch Training

Here are a couple of tips that can help you train your Border Collie to fetch its ball:

• If your dog is food orientated, use treats when your friend is showing your dog what to do., Make sure your dog sees you give your friend a treat when they return to you with the ball. When your Border Collie returns the ball to you, make sure your give it a treat as well because that is what it will expect.
• Be careful of what you do with your hands when training your dog to fetch. The idea is for your dog to react to the ‘fetch’ command not to the action of throwing the ball. To avoid this, say the command word slightly after throwing the ball.