I have made two mistakes (that I am admitting to in this post) and I wondered if someone had a suggestion.

First, when my pup was 9 weeks old (now 15 weeks) I was playing with her with the orbee ball and she just loved it. So, I dropped it. On her. On her head. Now, anytime something comes toward her, she lets it drop and then pounces on it. She is like that little kid in the outfield that is too busy getting out of the way to catch the ball. I have tried to avoid dropping anything one her (even food) for a while to see if she would forget it. I thought if I taught her to catch food she would get over this, but I wanted some suggestions before I do any more damage.

The second issue is also orbee related. She does love this toy, but she will NOT grab the ball, just the string. I know it is supposedly because I am moving the string too much or too little or whatever, but I have tried everything and she just jumps up to get the string. I tried taking the string off so she could get used to chomping on the ball, but as soon as the string is back, that's what she wants. Any thoughts on this?

Thank you in advance. BTW, she will be a working dog and we have high hopes for Mondio.

I would work on teach her to catch food and just play with her with the Orbee in a fashion where you are not tossing it at her. She will get over it.

When Jesea was a pup, I accidentally smacked her with the tug, and it took her about a week to get over that.

Plus, Mika is still pretty young, so I would not worry about her "catching" anything other than food if you want her to catch stuff right now.

Ember is the same way about the string on the ball, she is not a big fetcher, but she loves to tug and it doesn't seem like she likes the "feel" of the orbee, so I take the strings out and tie them so they are doubled and we play short, easy games of tug.
She seems to like going and getting the garden hose lengths, PCV water pipe that has a "foam" type wrap (almost like SAM splint material) and the pocket tugs (LB Item), but she only does it once or twice before she wants to tug.
Needless to say we are working on fetch, and that is proving to be a bit of a challenge since all she wants to do is bite and hang from things.