So, we play a lot of baseball in my house. And I live in Louisiana so the heat and humidity are insane! I got so tired shagging baseballs for my son, so using operant conditioning (we'll cover that topic later), I trained Darth to play the outfield. Genetic factors that helped him be a great outfielder is that he's a goldendoodle and by nature, they are dogs who like to retrieve things and have a great temperament for wanting to please their owners (I mean let's be honest, a cat wouldn't do this for you, right?). He's loves to run and has high energy. He's built in a way where he can easily run and pick up the ball in his mouth. He's a really smart dog, as he's part poodle and poodles are known for their high intelligence. Environmentally, Darth has become a great outfielder because we've played baseball a lot and I've worked with him on training him to get the ball, bring it back and drop it. We provide him lots of love (and treats) and in return he wants to please us. We've worked with him before on following some simpler commands, such as sit, so he was pretty easily able to grasp outfielding. While I would love to take a lot of the credit for Darth being a successful outfielder, I attribute most of his success in this to genetics. Because, like I said, let's be honest, a cat would be much harder to train than a dog, which makes me believe it is more on something that is within his genetics, than environmental factors.
