Sandra & Müüsli, Border Collie, 4,5 month old, Germany

Welcome! And I am looking forward to some puppy fun! 🙂

Restrain – no worries, she is doing perfectly fine for a puppy this young. 🙂 With pups I do less repetitions at once and if you see she is not resisting/pulling, rather than pulling her further back, let her go forward for a step or two and stop her again, closer to the bowl. And it is perfectly fine to do it with harness and the toy, harness and thrown toy or harness and thrown food. And yes, in the previous comment I meant bowl not ball. 🙂

Hihi dogs are so funny when they “loose” the handler. Nice hide and seek! When doing food throws and running up and down the field, try to start calling her on a specific hand as soon as she turns around after eating the treat. So she doesn’t try to outrun you. 🙂 You don’t want her to practise that too much in connection with your movement. You can start just walking not running first so you can control things better. Throw and when she turns wiggle the hand you are calling her too and call her. You can even ask for a nose touch if she will have problems coming directly to the hand. Than gradually pick up the pace.

Jump up – good! When you are in the environment with more distractions you can be satisfied with any attention she gives you and reward it with action – I usually run backwards and talk to the dog with happy voice while I search for and deliver the treat. I want the dog to understand that by giving me attention (on his own, not being provoked) action starts. The energy and proposal that comes from the dog and is not provoked in any way is always the best kind of attention/engagement suitable to build on. 🙂

Yes, you are right. The longer you played, the more she was holding on, but that is normal. She was getting tired and overwhelmed. So I suggest a couple of things. First of all keep the session short, only a couple of exchanges, no more. Try to start with ball to food exchanges – throw ball in one direction and than food in the other… ball again, food again… If that goes well, you can randomly do ball to ball and also food to food and than ball again.
It is a smart choice to stop tugging for the time she is teething. 🙂

“ I meant, when she’s running faster she holds them more.. so I didn’t run that much like it is mentioned in the description of the excercise and stayed more stationary.”
Oh yes, that too! When they are focusing on some kind of action, they can totally forget that they are carrying something in their mouth. 🙂 So yes, you were completely right to slow down.
Ball to food exchanges went well! She was getting more and more fluent throughout the session. You can keep moving slowly, but make sure you always turn your back fully to her, don’t face her with your front as that makes her drift away some. Now that you can predict when she will drop, you can start using some word that will mark that. “Aus, drop,…” In the first phase only use it during/or just before you know she will drop it based on how she normally behaves. When she gets familiar with the word, you will be able to help her drop it while moving as well. Also make sure you react to droping with excitement “yeey, what a good girl” so she is reminded that it is dropping the toy that makes a difference in this game. It is natural for pups to not even be aware of what they are doing, because they are only doing what feels convenient to them at a certain point.