Teach your dog to play frisbee in 4 simple steps!

by pancakeandpepper | Apr 17, 2020 | Dog

Growing up I always had dogs, but my husband didn’t because he and his dad were “allergic.”  It was kind of one of the conditions when we decided to get married that he would let me have a dog.  He told me that he wanted a dog that could catch frisbees, so, we have a dog that is an excellent frisbee catcher!

Today I’m going to walk you through the steps I took to teach Pepper to catch a frisbee. 

What you will need:

A dog

A thrower (aka you)

A frisbee

These are my favorite kind of frisbee.  I find that the soft rubbery dog frisbees are the best.  We tried the hard plastic kind for a while, but they would crack when she would bite down on them and they would cause cuts in her mouth that would make her bleed.  Not good.  Her grandparents bought her one of these, but it also makes her bleed.  It’s sturdier than the rubbery ones though.

Frisbees do not make good chew or pull toys.  Every time we leave a frisbee with a dog sitter it gets ruined because the people will play tug with Pepper, so that is one of our rules.  She only gets the frisbee when it’s time to play the right game with it.  Otherwise, they will just get ruined.

A large area to play

Your yard may be big enough, but it may not be, just try it out to see.  We started Pepper out at a dog park in our apartment complex.  Since then we’ve tried to find large open fields for her to play in.  A dog park might be a good place, we’ve also played with her in a large open space behind our church.  Just find a place that works well for you.  Sometimes we will play across our large front yard and our neighbor’s front yard.

Step 1.

First, your dog needs to know how to play fetch.  We were pretty lucky.  Since Pepper is a retriever she pretty much “came out of the box” knowing how to play fetch.  We didn’t have to teach her.  She doesn’t need to know how to play fetch with a frisbee, any toy will do.

Step 2.

Take your dog outside and start playing fetch with a frisbee.  She doesn’t need to be able to catch it, just to chase it and bring it back.  It’s also ok if you are not good at throwing a frisbee.  You will get better.  When Pepper was little, she was really terrible and giving toys back.  She was great at bringing them back but bad at letting go.  That is ok.  We would use two frisbees when we took her out so that she would drop one when we would throw the other.

Step 3.

This step is super great because you don’t really have to do anything.  Eventually, your dog will learn that it’s easier, or more fun to catch the frisbee before it lands.  When Pepper figured this out it was a game-changer.   Now she loves to play frisbee and she is so good at it.  When we take her out other people who see us playing are always really impressed.

You will continue to get better at throwing a frisbee too.  When we first started, we were pretty bad.  Now we’re pretty good at it.  I tell people that you can get better at anything you do 200 times a day for a year.  That’s not to say that you need to play that often.  Play as often as you like, but we loved the game, so we played it all the time.  We still play a lot, but not quite as much since we have Pancake too.  (BTW he is awful at throwing the frisbee, but he still loves it.  He’ll get better eventually too.)

Step 4.

This step kind of goes along with your other dog training, but you need to teach your dog the “drop it” command so that she will release the frisbee.  Once you have this down, you’re pretty much good to go and your dog will be an excellent frisbee catcher too!

Even though Pepper’s been playing frisbee for a long time now, she doesn’t always catch them.

I would love to see pictures and videos of your dogs playing frisbee!  Please share them on my Facebook page!