A Dog Playing Fetch A Ball In The Home Backyard

Back in the day, when old-fashioned coercion training was de rigueur, it was generally accepted that if you didn’t teach a “forced retrieve,” you didn’t have a reliable retrieve. Today, as the field of modern, science-based positive reinforcement training has incubated and matured, we know better. While you can still find die-hard trainers who are more than willing to inflict pain on a dog to force him to hold a fetch object in his mouth, you can also find a growing number of trainers who are teaching happy, reliable retrieve behaviors without ever even considering the use of pain.