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Location: Nottingham
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 4,477
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Try using a dummy covered in rabbit skin (you can get these from any game fair, normally around £6 but are treated and so arent as good as "proper" rabbit skins).
At the moment it's all a game to her and all rather novel. I assume you would train a lurcher to retrieve in the same way you would train a gundog. Just start off in the garden with the dummy and encourage her to bring it back to you, giving lots of praise when she does.
It's all part of teaching them they are working for you, not themselves and all retrieves must be brought back to you. What did she do with the rabbit when she'd ran home with it?
A ball is just a toy, a rabbit she's caught is a totally different thing and the dog isnt stupid, she knows it's dinner potentially. Once you have mastered the rabbit skin dummy, then move onto cold game perhaps, all the while pressing home to her that anything she fetches she cannot just run off with.