Quote: Paul Andrew

I will usually walk her to the park, where we play a little obedience training game. I make her sit, or down or stay or come. Her reward is for me to throw her ball as far as I can for her to retrieve. I will play this game with her until she shows signs of being tired i.e. laying down in the shade. Once shes good and tired I walk her home.

The exercise amount sounds good but I think you might find upping the ante on the mental stimulation will go far in lessening her need to create her own games. What are your goals for her? Sport, Protection, Companion....?

You have a GSD who is blessed with boundless energy and brain power. Walking to the park, performing obedience, chasing the ball are wonderful energy outlets and would be more than enough for a typical dog. But your girl was bred to problem solve and needs variety and challenge. Have you been increasing the difficulty of the obedience commands as she is able to perform them with distraction? Training tricks is another way to expand her mind. Even something as simple as changing the route you take to the park or instead of playing fetch play find your ball would increase her mental stimulation.

I commend your commitment to increase her exercise but make sure a fair amount of that exercise is expended as brain power.

Thanks again. I never knew that OCD was an issue with dogs. Shes spread out on the tile right now because I worked her hard this morning. I will do some research on "upping the ante" on her training.

 Quote: Paul Andrew

Her reward is for me to throw her ball as far as I can for her to retrieve. I will play this game with her until she shows signs of being tired i.e. laying down in the shade. Once shes good and tired I walk her home.

She is about 9 months old

Paul, something else that I might mention is that you are saying that you throw her ball as far as you can for her to retrieve. I would assume, (correct me if I am wrong)I would be careful about over running ( running too hard or too far) a 9 month old puppy. It can be damaging to her hips. I would not run a puppy 'until it is tired'. You run the risk of her hurting herself when running until she is really showing signs of fatigue. There are many ways to exercise a dogs body & mind without overdoing the running. The trick is to read when she is starting to show some early signs of tiring, like slowing down a tiny bit etc. & stop the game there. With a truly high drive dog, you need to know when it is time to stop, because when they are 'in drive' they will litterly go until they drop. My female WILL literly go until she drops. I need to know when to call it quites. If I threw her ball in the woods, she would search until she found it or drop dead which ever came first. I am not kidding about that. She is an extremely high drive GSD. Good luck with you dog. Get creative with her training.

Just wanted to add that when my dog chases flies he doesn't pay much attention to whatever else is around. He has on occasion fallen into something after jumping to catch one. For this reason we stop him doing it.

If your dog is the same there's every chance she could hurt herself on something outside because her attention is on the fly.

My GSD will chase and snap, even catch flies, bees, and other buzzing/stinging insects. She has been stung before, but that doesn't stop her. She is exercised daily and I'm going to start a routine with her-I'm going to take her with me when I rollerblade (I've done this a couple times with her and she loved it!).

As far as the bug chasing goes, she does it sporadically. Except for one day while we were on vacation, it was a day long activity and we were tossing her orbie and playing with her quite a bit, but she still chased bugs the WHOLE day. She pooped herself out-it went hand in hand with us working with her that day too.

My GSD hasn't made it to the OCD yet, I sure don't want it to get that way, because she does have a ton of prey/ball drive and I don't want her thinking that bugs are prey too.

 Quote: Anne Jones

 Quote: Paul Andrew

Her reward is for me to throw her ball as far as I can for her to retrieve. I will play this game with her until she shows signs of being tired i.e. laying down in the shade. Once shes good and tired I walk her home.

She is about 9 months old

Paul, something else that I might mention is that you are saying that you throw her ball as far as you can for her to retrieve. I would assume, (correct me if I am wrong)I would be careful about over running ( running too hard or too far) a 9 month old puppy. It can be damaging to her hips. I would not run a puppy 'until it is tired'. You run the risk of her hurting herself when running until she is really showing signs of fatigue. There are many ways to exercise a dogs body & mind without overdoing the running. The trick is to read when she is starting to show some early signs of tiring, like slowing down a tiny bit etc. & stop the game there. With a truly high drive dog, you need to know when it is time to stop, because when they are 'in drive' they will litterly go until they drop. My female WILL literly go until she drops. I need to know when to call it quites. If I threw her ball in the woods, she would search until she found it or drop dead which ever came first. I am not kidding about that. She is an extremely high drive GSD. Good luck with you dog. Get creative with her training.

Thanks for the tips! She is exactly as you say. I believe she would literally play or chase flies until the death if I let her. I need to find some fun and challenging new things for her to do.

Paul,

This link has a ton of suggestions and lots of them are gentle on young joints.

http://users.tkk.fi/mtt/belg_tricks.html

There's some great books sold on Leerburg AND they're 10% off until Sunday 8/16. Shaping, clicker training, tricks, etc would all help provide some mental stimulation for the O.P.'s dog.

Books for Sale on Leerburg

Katie

Danke will chase flies, bees, moths, bubbles... If it's small and moving, it's chasable.

Leave it means leave it. Period.

My pittyx heads straight to the clover looking for those giant bumble bees and actually got stung by one yesterday but didn't really swell up. I figured out what she was doing the day before after seeing her repeatedly pawing and pouncing on the clover. I've been finding dead bumble bees in the clover. I don't know how many times she's been stung, (labx is doing the same thing although he is afraid when they fly and runs to me immediately when they get airborne, had a bad experience with a *issed off hornet last year.) I saw a small welt on her(Gabby pitty x) lip after she squeaked and shook her mouth vigorously. I wonder why she's not swelling up. I didn't see a stinger either so it may have stung on the inside. Whenever I see her heading for the clover I tell her to leave it. That's one thing she did learn at Petsmart.