Need some insight into puzzling change in play behavior

I am really stumped on understanding some changes in the way my corgi wants to play and could use some insight.

First, some background info. My female corgi is now coming up on her 5th bday. She has always been a bit demanding and insatiable when it comes to play, she always wants more of it and immediately otherwise she just mopes about and only comes alive whenever I do something different in order to assess if I will go play with her now. This is not a problem because I know I'm an enabler. Play usually refers to 2 different games. The first game I simply pass a basketball around like a soccer ball and she adds to the momentum in pushing it around with her nose as she tries to get under it and sort of launch it into the air like a swing. I use a basketball because it had tougher skin compaedheto my dead soccer ball. She used to moderately enjoy this game but had since abandoned it for the second game which started out as a fetch but has evolved into "catch". I will try to explain what I mean by its evolution. Start off with a game of fetch that Kara is only mildly interested in. Obviously fetch can grow old for us humans too, luckily I used to play high school baseball as a pitcher so now I start varying the balls movements by bouncing it off a wall and a shallow angle so that Kara can effectively chase it and catch it off a single bounce, sometimes without it ever touching the floor. Thus both of us are now happy. She was happy with a significantly more challenging and rewarding game and me because I like to throw balls. During this time she learn to reject offers of fetch by anyone else since she saw the game as boring. Then one day I made the mistake of throwing it side armed so there would be more bounces on rapid succession to stimulate her herding instinct. Now she still acts all demanding for playtime with the balls like before however after I throw the ball she'll just watch it go, maybe go retrieve it 20 sec later, pick it up then drop it and sniff it and just look at me. This will still occur even with the new side throws. I've tried washing the balls thinking maybe they were nasty to her as well as trying to hype her up for play but all have been only temporary and evoked tepid responses. So now all I have is a moping corgi that demands to play all the time then not play. Any ideas?

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Permalink Reply by Bogart the Cardigan on March 8, 2015 at 9:13pm

Try asking your dog to do a trick before you throw the ball, like "roll over" or "sit". Bogart enjoys the tricks and sees the throwing of the ball as the "reward."

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Permalink Reply by Linda on March 8, 2015 at 11:00pm

I would have her checked by the vet. Max started getting off his game of fetch, wanted to play, would retrieve it once and then quit. He was aging so I thought it was just age. He seemed to be less interested in things in other games too, then one day he jumped up on the front door to greet my husband. He let out a yelp and refused to turn his head, it was slightly tilted to one side. Took him in and after xrays it turned out he had a calcification in his neck. The jump is what put it over the edge but after it was diagnosed I realized that all those small things that went on for months were leading up to that. Doing what used to be fun began to hurt him so he just stopped doing them.

They can't tell us if something is wrong and sometimes it's hard for us to know but when they go off their game, so to speak, having them checked is a good idea.