Dog Sports: Treibball

Recently we were given a book to check out by Dianna L Stearns, which is entitled, Get the Ball Rolling: A Step by Step Guide to Training for Treibball (Dogwise Training Manual). If you’re not familiar with Treibball, allow me to introduce you to this fun new sport for dogs that is taking Europe by storm. Treibball combines all of the benefits of herding, but rather than using sheep (or cats) to herd, it uses exercise balls. This sport was first created in Germany as a positive-training game that is about as close of a hybrid between herding and soccer as you can get.

Beyond the obvious fun of teaching your dog to herd, Treibball helps offset impulse control of our more “focused” dogs, increases off-leash reliability and builds an amazing relationship between you and your dog. Since no physical or verbal corrections are allowed in the game, you will need to have a dog that listens well. You’ll be using clicker-training, which shows the commitment to this sport as a positive-training sport.

Many of the skills your dog will learn include commands like sit, stand, down, and watch and as it’s such an easy sport to begin in (you need nothing but a yard and a few exercise balls to start), we know you’ll love building upon your relationship.

Equipment Required

• Exercise balls
• Yard
• Clicker
• whistle (only if you decide to use a whistle rather than hand signals)

Goals of Game

• Gather balls in yard that are behind barriers, then return the ball to the handler, Type of dogs best suited:
• Any type of herding dog will naturally pick up this sport and the training will lie on you, the handler.
• Of course the herding dogs will do incredibly well in this competition, but dogs of any breed are welcome. We’ve seen pitbulls, boxers, The goal:
• Move exercise balls around a field to score goals.

This sport is gaining popularity worldwide and you should be able to find competitions throughout the United States. As with any game, there is a bit of a learning curve and the rules can seem somewhat daunting at first. But you and your dog will easily get the hang of it! We’ve got the “easy” way to learn and some fun pics as well as a video below.

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To begin this sport, consider picking up this very informative book by the co-founder of the American Treibball Association, Dianna L. Stearns, CPDT-KA, CDBC, CATT. <INSERT LINK> The book is incredibly informative and gives you a wide selection of exercises, complete with helpful photos and diagrams, that you can do with your dog to begin learning basics. In fact, even if you don’t want to get into Treibball, we highly recommend this book. You’ll learn things like hand targeting, how to transfer cues (for example, you may teach your dog to come to your hand, but you’ll want him to get him to respond to cues from a stick or whistle and this book shows you how to do that).

There are also a tremendous number of skills your dog will pick up naturally while training and you’ll also be learning, which is the best way to be when you have a dog. For more information, visit the http://www.americantreibballassociation.org/ or pick up this informative book from Dianna L Stearns.

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