No interest in toys or balls

Hi All

I have a 6 month old Amstaff who has very little interest in toys or balls. He will chase the ball maybe a few times, once a week when i throw it. If he goes for it he loses interest very fast. Training him is a little hard because he only listens and pays attention when I have some food in my hand. He will sit, come and wait in that case, but without food there's no chance. It would be great if his reward was going for the ball instead of getting food.
Is this normal behavior, am I asking too much or it only takes time? Any advice would help.

Thanks

Have you tried a kong with some treats in it

Sometimes I think dogs are either food motivated/praise motivated/toy motivated and thats just them. I have never treat trained Moo, purely praise, is this something you have tried?

You need to phase out the treats, I give biscuit a treat every other time she carries out a command. You need to be more interesting than the distraction, and some dogs just aren't that people focused, so if he isn't focused on you or toys, you'll have to train with food unfortunately! It will come with time that you may be able to phase food out entirely, but he's still very young and the world is probably very exciting to him at the moment!

Simi wrote:Have you tried a kong with some treats in it

No. I'm thinking of getting him one though. He started chewing on a hollow toy stick i got him. He destroyed half of it in 2 days. We played with the stick and I still have to show it to him but he's getting the idea.

janey wrote:Sometimes I think dogs are either food motivated/praise motivated/toy motivated and thats just them. I have never treat trained Moo, purely praise, is this something you have tried?

I tried on only praise and it still doesn't work. I don't think he fully understands "good boy". He will catch on I think.

Rachel33 wrote:You need to phase out the treats, I give biscuit a treat every other time she carries out a command. You need to be more interesting than the distraction, and some dogs just aren't that people focused, so if he isn't focused on you or toys, you'll have to train with food unfortunately! It will come with time that you may be able to phase food out entirely, but he's still very young and the world is probably very exciting to him at the moment!

At first I gave him a treat every time he did something I told him, but now I give him a treat every second or third time. But i have to have a treat in my hand for him to see it. He did listen to me a couple of times when I had nothing in my hand. I'll just keep working with him every day.

I only wished he was crazy about the ball so I could exercise him more that way instead of me running and him following me. That's the times we don't meet other dogs for him to play.

Thanks everybody for the help and sugestions!   

Bane isn't interested in balls at all either! I've tried taking them to the park with me for him to chase, but I end up running after them calling him after me

Bane is very food motivated but we always praise a lot while we give the treat and are slowly working with less and less treats each time and more praise. It will probably just take some time

Little update.
I started throwing him a tennis ball at home and he was interested in it more each day. He started to like it.
Outside it depended on how much distractions were around him.
Today I bought him a squeaky ball and he went absolutely crazy over it. I never seen him that excited, not even with food. Now he "just" need's to learn to bring the ball and drop it on command. Then I think training is going to become much easier.  

Awww thats great   when I first rescued Daisy she wasn't interested in toys, had no idea what to do with them or what play was, that has all changed now of course!

Can't give banes tennis balls, he peels them then breaks the ball, the last one lasted 20 minutes at most lol.

Yes Daisy shreds them too, I had to remove a peice from her bum the other day   

Fantastic news we can't even mention the B-A-L-L in our house or Darcy goes crackers

I think he's yaw is too weak to destroy the tennis ball just yet. I'm talking about a real tennis ball, not the ones you can buy at a pet center. He tore one in about 20-30 minutes, the real one he didn't manage in 10 days. But one of his Amstaff friends did when they were playing outside. Now he has no ball to play with. He'll het a new one this weekend.
I'm really happy he's crazy about the squeaky one.

Squeeky ones are always a winner, just make sure you remove the squeek if he rips it! Which usually happened after about 10 mins with Daisy   I have a collection of them now, always good to get her attention!!

We get sasha dunlop elite tennis balls they are the only ball that she hasnt managed to destroy in 2 minutes. They haven't got a seam as such so she cant rip the cover off and the inner is rubber not like normal cheaper versions which she does destroy in seconds xx