Frisbee training?

I am anxiously anticipating replies to this post.  We'd love to know how to train this one...

I first taught Sierra to fetch with a ball as well.
She knows the game is on when I say "are you ready?" and psyche her up with the ball. I'd pretend to throw it, or tease her with it so that she jumps to try to get it out of my hands.
To expand out into other objects, I simply picked up the object (frisbee, stick, snowball, kong, whatever), waved it around in the air, and asked, "are you ready?"  She's learned that whatever object I throw is meant for her to go get.

I'm not sure this will help any. In fact I'm sure it's probably useless. Sierra picked up on it really quickly, so I guess I should be greatful.
Good Luck

I've never tried the "are you ready".  If we go outside and drop her lead she knows she gets to run and play fetch.  I don't trust her off lead yet.  Her recall is "selective", but to play fetch she is really tuned in to the game only.

I have a Heeler and I have tried to train this as well. When I threw the frisbee, she just stared at it and watched it land of the ground. Then she would go over to it and pick it up and start to chew it! So I just kept throwing it over and over and she would only grab it when it had hit the ground and was rolling. Finally, after about an hour, she jumped. She didn't catch it, but she at least jumped. I was so happy! I kept throwing it for about 10 more minutes and she would jump and try to catch it, but never actually caught it. Oh well. I'll try again.

How about putting the ball away and make the frisbee her only option?  Why should she care about the frisbee when you keep throwing the ball?
 
Get her excited about the frisbee by you being excited by it.  Toss it in the air and catch it, ooh and ahh over it, toss it and race her to it, make her really want it - then let her have it briefly and then take it back and put it away.  Take it out hours later and make a big deal again and let her have it for a little while longer.  Repeat.  Pretty soon she'll be crazed over it!

Also, please be careful about having your dog jump for a frisbee.  It may look really cool when trained frisbee dogs do it but it's very easy for your dog to get a very serious injury jumping in the air to catch it.  Puppies especially should not by jumping after frisbees.  The last thing you want is an injured dog!

I trained this by first getting a really good fetch with many different objects-- started with a ball, then moved on to sticks, stuffed toys, tug toys, whatever. Only when the dog had generalized the "get it and and bring it back" to any object I tossed did we move on to frisbee.
So first I waved the frisbee around and and encouraged the dog to grab it out of my hand, and then give it back to me. When she was eagerly grabbing it and reliably giving it back, I started sort of just dropping it right before she grabbed at it. A few sessions, and she was happily catching it when it was tossed at her from a few feet away, and bringing it back; if she missed a catch, I'd encourage her to pick it up and bring it back anyway. Then we just added distance. Which we're still working on. Biggest problem now is my lousy frisbee throwing.

I am keeping the ball in play because I want her to be excited to be outside playing/running.  I don't want her to get frustrated because I'm throwing the frisbee and she doesn't understand what to do with it.  That is why I thought if I intermittently threw the frisbee she would catch on.  She is a very smart dog.  I think I'll just keep trying for a while.

Ashland - Does she jump pretty high?  Lucy jumps up really high when she is catching her football, that is what made me think she would great with a frisbee.  

She is a smart dog - she knows that you'll eventually throw the ball and there's no reason to care about the frisbee!
 
 
 

My dog loves to play fetch, and so I wanted to teach her to catch a frisbee too. I found something online that gave steps to teach your dog to play frisbee. Cassidy would play fetch with almost anything ( inlcuding firewood logs! []) though so this was pretty easy to teach. The first thing I did was get her excited-- I say "do you want to play?". She also knows Where'd it go? Go Find It! Go get your frisbee/ball/stick etc.  So then have your dog jump for the frisbee, or at least hold it over thier head to get them to grab it. Do that a couple times, and then have the dog about 4 feet away sitting facing you, and toss the frisbee in the air toward them. If the dog catches it ( not very likely on the first time, in my experience! [] ) then praise them a lot, otherwise keep trying until the dog at least tries to catch it. Then toss it on the ground and see if they'll chase it to bring it back. After that step, toss the frisbee short distances for them to catch, and eventaully you can just fling it out there for them to chase and catch! These steps probably shouldn't be done all in  one session, of course, but keep the dog intersted in the frisbee. Cassidy will tear after it if I throw it way out, and as far as how often she catches it, if she can get to it then, she catches it. Most of the time, its a bad throw on my part that she's not able to get it.  So we enjoy that  [] I started playing with the frisbee with her at about 2 years old, and she's 3 now. So her joints could grow, etc. It's the same type of rule with agility, the dogs should be at least 1 year to do agility, all the running/jumping etc. Maybe you could do a search online to get some more results with training, or better instructions than mine. []