When Barret Fritscher was about nine years old, his uncle’s dog went viral for fetching bullfrogs.
Back in 1998, that meant a local outlet filmed a TV segment on Jack the yellow Lab; Fritscher says the story was picked up nationally and even appeared on Good Morning America.
“Some of my family are crawfish farmers and rice farmers. And naturally, as a byproduct of crawfish, bullfrogs will be there. So all the time as a puppy Jack was just bringing frogs in the shop and dropping them on the floor,” says Fritscher, now 35 and working as a tugboat captain out of Duson, Louisiana. “Growing up I kind of idolized that dog. I was like, ‘Man, if I had a dog that could do it all, it’d be awesome just to train him to frog one time.’”
That’s just what he did — and how Fritscher’s own video of his 7-year-old Lab, Juice, went viral on Instagram over the weekend.
Fritscher grew up hunting ducks (“a staple of life in Louisiana”) and training the family’s duck dogs alongside his dad. On weekends and in his spare time, he spearheads informal dog training sessions with anyone interested. So when his nephew (the grandson of the viral uncle) asked him last summer how he could train his own duck dog, Rip, to pick up frogs like Jack, Fritscher considered the possible drills.
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Fritscher suggested putting a few frogs on ice, which makes them lethargic and less likely to relocate while training, and running short retrieving drills. Soon Rip was retrieving frogs. Fritscher simply advised continuing Rip’s hold conditioning to ensure he brings the frogs to hand. It also left him contemplating his own dog, Juice.
While Jack was self-taught, Fritscher says he taught Juice to pick up frogs. It didn’t take much additional training, however, because Juice already had the fundamentals of a working retriever down pat, including obedience and steadiness. First Fritscher tried sending Juice on a sluggish frog from about 15 feet. Juice overran the mark, however, because it didn’t occur to him the frog was the mark.
“It’s really interesting. It almost seems like dogs can’t smell frogs. For whatever reason, if they don’t see him, they’re not gonna grab him,” says Fritscher. “[Juice] was literally stepping on the frog. At one point he drug his nose across its back. He didn’t even think twice of it.”
Next, Fritscher shortened the drill distance to about 10 feet. Juice spotted the frog, and it clicked.
“He’s like, ‘You want me to grab this?’ And then once he saw what I was wanting him to do, he pretty much connected the dots. Now I send him and boom, he’ll get it and come back.”
The key to getting any retriever to pick up frogs, says Fritscher, is proper hold conditioning. The dog needs to be able to pick up objects on command because most dogs naturally don’t want to carry frogs around.
“A bullfrog’s defense is their taste. A dog has to want to hold it, or has to be really well trained on hold, to be able to grab it and hold onto it. And even then some dogs will spit it because frogs taste bad,” says Fritscher. “So I think most dogs would do it, but not every dog will do it.”
Because Juice was already force-fetched and conditioned to hold birds and other items, frogging came naturally. When they go frogging now, Fritscher’s main job is to help Juice mark the frogs. If his dog can see it, Fritscher can count on a retrieve.
They hunt his family’s crawfish ponds and rice fields at night (which are also generally safer from that gators and snakes that “Louisiana is full of”), and Fritscher is careful to shine a bright light on the frogs and point them out with a stick. Once he sees Juice’s ears perk up — a sign he’s locked in — Fritscher sends him. The water is shallow, and retrieves are usually short.
To illuminate the frogs Fritscher wears a hard hat with a big light on the front; it resembles a coon hunter’s headlamp, though his is made for boaters by Go-Devil, the mud motor company. The next time they go out, Fritscher plans to attach a light to his pointing stick, so when he turns his head to look at Juice, he can keep the light steady.
“Juice is that once-in-a-lifetime dog for me,” he says. “He’s literally a multitool dog. Of course he’ll do ducks, geese, and doves, but he’ll also run rabbits, track deer, and now frog. And when we go to South Dakota, he’ll also flush upland birds. He’s pretty incredible.”
Fritscher acknowledges that he’s been around duck dogs and dog training his whole life, thanks to his dad, but there’s something special about Juice he won’t take credit for.
“He’s the kind of dog who makes his owner look good.”
Like the dog trainers and hunters he’s learned from, Fritscher enjoys training with anybody who’s interested. He encourages any locals to reach out to him on Instagram with questions about training dogs to frog, or about training in general.
“I just love to train dogs,” he says. “My dream is to get off of tugboats and be a full-time dog trainer.”
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Fetching frogs also helps ensure Juice has a lower-impact, high-reward activity as he ages, as well as off-season work. (Louisiana allows frog hunting almost year round, with a closed season in April and May.) Frogging is fun, but it’s also about “finding something a little bit easier” for Juice as he ages.
“When your dog goes, you [always] wish you did more with them. So I try to do everything I can with my dog.”
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