Teaching my dog to play fetch

Question
I have 2 year old Golden retreiver who I recenly got from a family that had to give him away. He follows me around everywhere that I go and can't stand to be alone. When I try to play fetch with him he at first would go and get the ball and return it to me, but as soon as we went outside he would stop. When I throw the ball he just sits there. Is there anythingthat I can do to get him more interested?

Answer
If you've only just gotten him, HE probably isn't sure you will keep him!  Give him at least a few months to fully acclimate to your household.  Depending on his early experiences, he may not have been played with and doesn't know what to do, or he may have received some kind of physical correction when he made mistakes, so he's leery to try ANY new behavior until he figures you out, lest he get a correction.  (That alone is a great argument in favor of positive training!)  Some dogs, if they didn't learn to play with balls or toys, or even other dogs, when they were puppies, aren't really going to be players as adults either.  To this dog, the outdoors may be scary for a number of reasons.  As I said before, he may not yet understand that you are keeping him.  Perhaps the last time someone took him out in a yard was the day the other family took him to give him away:-(  He doesn't want to repeat that experience.  Another possibility is that he may have been contained in a yard that had invisible fencing, meaning that he experienced a shock if he tried to leave the yard - some dogs become afraid of the whole space, not just the boundary area.  At your house, he doesn't even know where the boundary is.  I would say that, at this point, you should simply work on building a bond and some communication with this dog to build his confidence in you.  One way to do that quickly is with clicker training.  If you aren't familiar with it, here are a couple of sites that may explain things: www.clickerlessons.com and www.clickertrainusa.com (good beginner videos here).  Good luck, and thank you so much for adopting a pet!