What do I do if... my dog doesn’t want to give their toy back
I stop trying to take it!
Often, it really is that simple. If your dog starts to move away with their toy and you chase them or try and grab it, your dog is probably going to become an expert at playing keep away.
Instead, we let them ‘win’ the toy and wait for them to bring it back to us. When we do this, dogs learn that the game ends when they move away, and starts again when they come back to us!
Why don’t you just teach them to ‘drop it’?
This is a very important skill and I do teach it, but it’s not where I start. If a dog is already feeling unsure about giving up their toy, spending ages drilling ‘drop it’ is likely to make that worse.
We boost their confidence in play first. When they start to bring the toy to you and ‘drop it’ by themselves, then we can start to work on teaching putting ‘drop it’ on cue.
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