12/17/2025
Meet River, who is here in a Board and Train program from our friends at Labrador Retriever Rescue of Florida. He came to us with some peculiar habits with his nightime routines. Though one of his habits was not so peculiar. In fact we see it all the time.
River is a fetch addict. Not in a healthy way. The kind of addict that should be in meetings. For a while I'm convinced thats all we were to him. Feeders of the food and throwers of the ball. Over the last couple weeks we have been finding other ways to engage him. One of his new favorite games is "Bobbing for Bits". While still incorporating some elements similar to fetch its slower paced. We aren't going for exhaustion. We are going for engagement in lower arousal activities for longer durations. Its a super simple activity right now and not really "training" by itself. But when incorporated with several other similarly engaging activities each day over the course of weeks with a strong routine and structure its gradually modifying his obsession with fetch and making room for our relationship to grow.
