If you own a dog and you love him very much, you may want to take some time to strengthen the relationship between you two. Playing is a great way of doing this. Especially playing fetch.

There are dogs that play fetch without having to go through training. Other dogs don’t understand it when you’re waving a ball around in their face. For this last group of dogs, a small investment of time and energy is required. Below, I describe three steps of training your dog to play fetch with you.

1. To start with, your dog needs to learn to pay attention to the ball. If it isn’t even paying attention to it, you can forget about the rest of the fetch play. You need to hold the ball in front of your dog’s eyes and nose. Whenever he pays any attention to the ball, by sniffing it for example, you need to praise him. Keep this up long enough, and your dog will start paying more attention to the ball and follow it around.

2. As soon as your dog has learned to show interest in the ball, it’s time to move on to the next step in his training. Now, he must learn to pick up the ball in his mouth. He might even do this all by himself. If he does not, then you will need to teach him this as well. You can do this by smearing some meat paste on the ball. This will make the ball a little more enticing for your dog. Once he picks it up, praise him and feed him a dog treat. Your doggy will learn to pick up the ball this way.

3. After your dog knows how to follow a ball and pick it up, it’s time that he learns he needs to take it back to you and drop it. You can do this by throwing the ball ten feet away until your dog follows it and then picks it up. Now you call him and show him a dog treat in your hand. This will make him run back to you with the ball still in his mouth. He will probably drop the ball in order to make place for the dog treat.

After you have gone through these simple steps, you are ready for a few small scale experiments. Throw the ball a short distance and say “Fetch!”. If the dog doesn’t go after the ball, you should try throwing it closer, or handing it to him again. When he does it correctly, make sure to treat and praise him.

By simply sticking to these guidelines on training your dog to play fetch, he should learn the game in a matter of weeks. As time passes, your dog will start to see what this game is all about. After the game becomes its own reward, you can save yourself a lot of dog treats. You might even use those to train him to play yet another game.

Owning a dog is a great thing. Dogs are loyal pets that will love you unconditionally. It’s definitely worth investing your time and energy to get the two of you closer together. Playing fetch is a great way of doing this. So stick to the training, and before you know it your doggy and you will be having a ball!