The Science of “Fetch” or why your dog drives you crazy returning that tennis ball. . .
In the 2004 movie “Spanglish,” the new housekeeper, played by Paz Vega, is told never to throw a ball to the family’s Lab, named Chum. In the middle of the movie, while she’s distracted taking English lessons, she forgets and inadvertently tosses Chum’s favorite ball into the next room.
Chaos ensues. Chum enthusiastically follows Vega around the house, knocking over furniture to get her to play fetch with him. He was relentless.
Having grown up with German Shepherds, I am familiar with Chum’s enthusiasm and Vega’s frustration. We could not look at a ball, a stick, or a rock without igniting the desire to play fetch. Our dogs would bring whatever object caught their attention, drop it at my feet (and occasionally a rock on my foot) and then stare at it and whine.
And come on, playing fetch a couple of times is fine. But our German Shepherds wanted to play forever. It would be getting dark or raining, or I’d throw a stick into a lake, or it was below zero, and they still wanted me to toss said object and wait until they returned to repeat.
Obsessed.
And then we come to our current dogs, a Great Pyrenees, and a Chihuahua-terrier. They have no interest in fetch, zero. If I throw a ball and yell “Fetch,” they look at me with curiosity: What is the human doing?
It begs the question, Why? Why do some dogs have a powerful drive to fetch while others are “meh?”
To answer the question, we need to dive into the roots of the evolution of dog behavior.
The “chase” behavior is probably ancient, passed from hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of years of mammalian predators and later wolves. On our walks, if Toby (our Great Pyrenees) just catches a glimpse of a rabbit, he bolts — often almost yanking my shoulder out of joint if he’s on a leash. It seems instinctive for a dog to chase prey.
Returning the ball (or rock, stick, or toy) is interesting. Some researchers theorize that it mimics the behavior of wolves returning food to a den of puppies. Others suggest that when wolves began interacting with humans, one of the traits humans reinforced was when a “proto-dog” helped on hunts, for example, retrieving game. Personally, I think our German Shepherds just wanted to see who could outlast whom. They usually won.
The point is that a lot of the retrieve or “fetch” behavior comes from deep in the evolutionary history of wolves, and then as dogs evolved, the animal’s interactions with humans.
But if all this is so, why does Toby just look puzzled when I throw a toy for him to fetch?
Here we need to understand breeds and what is genetically inherited and what is environmental — how a dog is raised, treated, trained, and socialized.
In a study I’ve mentioned before (you can google the article here: “Ancestry-inclusive dog genomics challenges popular breed stereotypes,” author: Kathleen Morrill), researchers compared the DNA of over 2000 dogs and survey results from over 16,000 dog guardians.
One key finding was that two behaviors that seem the most heritable and less breed-specific are human sociability and retrieving objects. This makes sense from a “co-evolving with humans” point of view: “proto-dogs” had to learn to be friendly and valuable.
Toby apparently didn’t get the memo.
But to be fair, Toby’s historical — the last few thousand years or so — lineage wasn’t selected for retrieving or playing fetch. Toby’s ancestors were bred to work alone protecting herds of sheep.
Since breeds were officially established in Victorian England 160 years ago, dogs like Labs, the aforementioned German Shepherds (and Chum’s ancestors), and others have been selected and bred to retrieve. Thus, they have that strong drive to play “fetch” with their humans.
The upshot of all this is if you want a dog you can play “fetch” with (and be careful what you wish for), picking the right breed of dog is essential. Many trainers will insist that if you start with a puppy, you can train any dog to play fetch — but with some dogs — like ours — it will be more of an uphill battle.
The last point I want to make is, beyond the game of fetch, or retrieving on a hunt, there is such variety of behaviors in our “best friends.” Like humans, no dog is alike. Each is unique. And I really don’t care that Toby won’t fetch!
