Just started this today with Ollie who I think was far far too enthusiastic trying to earn treats.
So day 1, spent the first few minutes experimenting with white wiffle balls, the hoops from his ring stacker and a cat ball with a bell in it to see if I could get him to hold any.
The wiffle balls got him over excited and aggressive, he took them the first few times then thought my finger was better to grab- not the best start as this is what I tried first.
The cat ball was my second option and a much better success, he would grab it, shake it up and down, then drop it into the bowl. For some reason after the first few times he started to drop it, caught it in his foot, shook it again with his foot, then dropped it into the bowl which entertained my bf greatly.
I also tried him with the rings earlier on in the session but he wasn't interested in holding them, it was only after he caught on that I wanted him to hold the objects I was giving him that he decided they were quite easy to hold and drop after all so we eventually stopped using the cat ball as I only had one and he kept flying down to the floor after it, plus I didn't want to keep having to pick it up and turn it into a game of me doing the fetching.
So we did the first few ensuring that I caught the object every single time, using click and reward.
after a while of that I started letting him miss the odd one as I wanted him to make the link between dropping it and dropping it into the bowl. This didn't seem to work as well as I hoped though and I am not sure if he is making the association or not as a few attempts seemed quite deliberate but even at the end of the session he was doing alot of random drops and sometimes throws.