I’m struggling to bring prey drive out in my 15 week old GSD puppy. He has no interest in a ball or a rag, do you have any suggestions?

Some dogs take a while for their drive to kick in. I personally like to see it early, but it’s possible for dogs to develop at different rates. Realize that right now your pup is also teething, so it’s a bad time to try to play any type of tugging games with him. His mouth may be sore and a negative experience during teething can inhibit some dogs from wanting to play prey games later on.

I would work on getting him engaged with you with food, and you can actually use the food as a “toy” to help develop his prey drive. This is covered in our Food DVD I’ll link below.

We have a new series of videos on how to do this. Start with The Power of Training Dogs with Markers and The Power of Training Dogs with Food. Once your pup is done teething, I’d recommend The Power of Playing Tug with Your Dog. You can click on the links to read full descriptions of the content in each DVD.

I hope this helps. Cindy