It's interesting reading these. It's so funny that so many people think fetch is just ingrained in all dogs and that when they get a dog that doesn't immediately get it so many don't look at it as a training issue, it's just obviously the dog is broken and will never fetch.
Jackson was just 'oh, a ball? Eh, you go get it' until about a year old or so when I finally decided I WANTED a dog that fetched. So I figured it was worth trying. Like I said in the above post, started on a long line with treats. I would honestly say it took almost a year for him to play in other places besides our own yard though. Now, at 5 years old, I can take him to an empty park/field, and fling the ball with a Chuck It and he'll do it over and over again and just ENJOYS himself. And he's even catching frisbees now farther and farther! So while he's a terrier and not a 'natural' when it comes to fetch, retrieving, etc, and maybe took a bit more work to bring out that drive, and no he'll never be a BC when it comes to frisbee, etc, but I turned into something FUN for him, and it's fun for me, and it tires him out, etc, so it was all worth it.
Had I never encouraged anything, or just wrote him off a non-fetcher, he'd never be doing these:
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