What dogs can learn from playing
" Goooo, get it ! ", that is when our dog "Palette" gets very excited and talkative from excitement. If you have read previous entry titled " Playing game of fetch ball/Frisbee", you would see what I mean by Palette being talkative. She loves chasing balls, catching Frisbee.. she loves to play with me. This normal playing seems nothing special, but in reality, playing is very important for dogs to learn many things. In case of playing ball with dogs, dogs can chase after objects, which many dogs love to do, and they can learn "give/drop" command during the play rather than to learn hold toys with growl.
Very first play dogs would experience is when they are still puppies. They play with siblings and dog parents and learn how to greet other dogs, how to read body language, how not to bite others hard, and other social etiquette in doggy world. These things are something we, human parents, cannot teach them enough, and also it is something playing alone cannot teach them. So, playing with siblings and dog parents at early puppy hood becomes first important things in their life. Puppies who did not play much with siblings or dog parents at early puppy hood might have hard time playing with other dogs because of lack of knowledge in social etiquette in doggy world.
Playing with us, human, help build strong bond between us. Also, playing is good physical, mental exercise also.
I like playing "Find it" game. You can see us playing find it game in previous entry "Find it" game here . You maybe even able to hear her sniffing sound in the video. She is very concentrated and it is fun to see her trotting around the house with full speed. We have started off teaching her command "find it".
It is easy to teach your dog "find it" command. Let your dog sit next to you and make sure to let them sniff at the treats, and then place the treats in front of them and, chances are dogs would try to get it. When they get the treats, click the clicker and say "Find it". And you can gradually let your dog sit-stay at one point and put the treats 1 feet away from dog or 2 feet away from dog where dogs can see the treats. Then, move on to let your dogs sit-stay, and you will go hide the treats,making sure that dogs can see where you hid the treats and, release the dog with command " Find it" and praise them when they found the treats. After this, you can move up to letting dogs sit-stay at one point and go hide the treats in other rooms or down stairs/upstairs, and dogs, at this point, cannot see where you hid the treats. From this point on, they must rely on nose more since visually, they did not get to see you hiding the treats.
With Palette, we started off like that and she sniffed out the yummy treats and now, I have made it more difficult sometimes and letting her sniff out her toys,not treats. In exchange of her bringing the hidden toy to me, she gets high valued treats and, she is very much into the game. What this game can teach your dogs is to teach them to use the sense of smell, and give them opportunity to "think" to solve the problem. And, since they will be trotting around the house here and there, they maybe sniffing stuff they might not go near to sniff at if not playing the game, and it maybe good to getting them used to see/smell things what they normally not have chance to go near/sniff at.
Last December, we had heavy snow, enough to make mini slider over our house entrance steps. Palette is giant Corgi (she is 2 inch taller than average Corgi height), but she needed bunny hopping to move ahead and I came up with "Find it game in the snow" and we had fun letting her sniff out the treats in yard covered with heavy snow. You can see her playing "Find it" game in the previous entry titled "Picnic in the snow" here . Bad thing about playing "Find it" game in the snow is that, if Palette could not find one, I have to wait til snow gets melt because my nose is not as good as Palette's and visually, everywhere is white and even if I put something to remember where I hide it, after you turn your back to the point and move back a couple of steps, you would find it hard to find the mark you put to remember the point
So, when I play with Palette, we play Find it game or ball, Frisbee. Other than that, we do training session daily. It is not like "Find it game" like play, but training is fun for Palette and she gets to learn all kinds of things. It is great way to have fun with your dogs, and also good way to encourage dogs to "think" because if you do clicker training your dogs, dogs must think what made you click- problem solving. I love teaching Palette fun tricks. You can teach your dogs all kinds of things not just obedience basic training with clicker. You can teach them help your chore such as closing doors, picking up items for you.. Giving your dog some sort of chore is good too. In case of Palette, she comes down to laundry room when I do laundry and, I say nothing but she knows her chore and she goes right behind the door, and shut the door for me when I come out with laundry basket. You can see her closing door in the previous entry titled "Clicker training:clicker is your friend ". Other than closing door for me, she brings her leash when we go for walk, and when dinner is ready, she ring the potty bell once and woof,woof twice and call family members "Dinner is ready". You should see how cranky she gets when everyone does not come to kitchen table right away. She rings the bell, woof, woof, peek her head to see if everyone is coming and wait a minutes or so, and she starts the ring,woof,woof again and woof woof gets louder as she waits for all to come to kitchen table.
Playing is not just with siblings or dog parents or humans. There are all kinds of toys on the market. When you choose your toys, what do you look for in toys? How they works? Sound? Size? Shapes? Durable or not so durable materials?
I think that it is good base to get your dogs toys based on how they like to play with toys. Also good to have variety of toys that encourage all kinds of play pattern. Toys can be good mental exercise objects, and good to avoid them feel bored, and curb the behavior.
For example, if your dogs love to shake toys, floppy toys may interests your dogs. If they love to chew toys, you may look toys made with tough, durable materials. For chewers, Antlers are good alternative for durable chew toys. If dogs love to de-stuff the toys, maybe toys with no stuffing might be a choice. If dogs love to chew off and make hole in toys, over sized toys might be good because when dogs chew things, they more likely to use the back molar to chew off and if toy were too big to put mouth over enough to chew,chew, chew, to chew pieces off, less likely to chew off pieces.
This squeaky fox has no stuffing inside. Nose area and tail area has squeaker.
What kinds of toys Palette has? You can see her toys in picture bellow. We counted 38 toys in her toy box.
That is a lot of toys. Not all toys encourage the same play patterns-chasing, retrieving, fetching, shaking, herding, problem solving, chewing etc. She has many squeaky toys; some are small, some are big, some talks (meow), some grunt, some are floppy and squeak.. Since I have learned Palette loved to munch on toys sometimes when puppy, her toys tend to be puffy ones that is hard for her to use her molars to chew off pieces. Also, she loves to shaking toys so, you can find some floppy toys in her toy box.
Her favorite toy and my favorite toy of choice for her maybe different but, personally I like interactive toys a lot. She has 2 interactive toys. One of which is called Cagey cube. Cagey cube comes with 4 different kinds of shapes of squeaky toys inside the soft cage. Square,Round,Triangle,and nubby shaped squeaker. You will place them into the soft cage and dog tries getting the toys out. You can see how my dog plays here with clip bellow. If you were a blog subscriber or reading this from facebook, please click here to watch video clip.
Very first play dogs would experience is when they are still puppies. They play with siblings and dog parents and learn how to greet other dogs, how to read body language, how not to bite others hard, and other social etiquette in doggy world. These things are something we, human parents, cannot teach them enough, and also it is something playing alone cannot teach them. So, playing with siblings and dog parents at early puppy hood becomes first important things in their life. Puppies who did not play much with siblings or dog parents at early puppy hood might have hard time playing with other dogs because of lack of knowledge in social etiquette in doggy world.
Playing with us, human, help build strong bond between us. Also, playing is good physical, mental exercise also.
I like playing "Find it" game. You can see us playing find it game in previous entry "Find it" game here . You maybe even able to hear her sniffing sound in the video. She is very concentrated and it is fun to see her trotting around the house with full speed. We have started off teaching her command "find it".
It is easy to teach your dog "find it" command. Let your dog sit next to you and make sure to let them sniff at the treats, and then place the treats in front of them and, chances are dogs would try to get it. When they get the treats, click the clicker and say "Find it". And you can gradually let your dog sit-stay at one point and put the treats 1 feet away from dog or 2 feet away from dog where dogs can see the treats. Then, move on to let your dogs sit-stay, and you will go hide the treats,making sure that dogs can see where you hid the treats and, release the dog with command " Find it" and praise them when they found the treats. After this, you can move up to letting dogs sit-stay at one point and go hide the treats in other rooms or down stairs/upstairs, and dogs, at this point, cannot see where you hid the treats. From this point on, they must rely on nose more since visually, they did not get to see you hiding the treats.
With Palette, we started off like that and she sniffed out the yummy treats and now, I have made it more difficult sometimes and letting her sniff out her toys,not treats. In exchange of her bringing the hidden toy to me, she gets high valued treats and, she is very much into the game. What this game can teach your dogs is to teach them to use the sense of smell, and give them opportunity to "think" to solve the problem. And, since they will be trotting around the house here and there, they maybe sniffing stuff they might not go near to sniff at if not playing the game, and it maybe good to getting them used to see/smell things what they normally not have chance to go near/sniff at.
Last December, we had heavy snow, enough to make mini slider over our house entrance steps. Palette is giant Corgi (she is 2 inch taller than average Corgi height), but she needed bunny hopping to move ahead and I came up with "Find it game in the snow" and we had fun letting her sniff out the treats in yard covered with heavy snow. You can see her playing "Find it" game in the previous entry titled "Picnic in the snow" here . Bad thing about playing "Find it" game in the snow is that, if Palette could not find one, I have to wait til snow gets melt because my nose is not as good as Palette's and visually, everywhere is white and even if I put something to remember where I hide it, after you turn your back to the point and move back a couple of steps, you would find it hard to find the mark you put to remember the point
So, when I play with Palette, we play Find it game or ball, Frisbee. Other than that, we do training session daily. It is not like "Find it game" like play, but training is fun for Palette and she gets to learn all kinds of things. It is great way to have fun with your dogs, and also good way to encourage dogs to "think" because if you do clicker training your dogs, dogs must think what made you click- problem solving. I love teaching Palette fun tricks. You can teach your dogs all kinds of things not just obedience basic training with clicker. You can teach them help your chore such as closing doors, picking up items for you.. Giving your dog some sort of chore is good too. In case of Palette, she comes down to laundry room when I do laundry and, I say nothing but she knows her chore and she goes right behind the door, and shut the door for me when I come out with laundry basket. You can see her closing door in the previous entry titled "Clicker training:clicker is your friend ". Other than closing door for me, she brings her leash when we go for walk, and when dinner is ready, she ring the potty bell once and woof,woof twice and call family members "Dinner is ready". You should see how cranky she gets when everyone does not come to kitchen table right away. She rings the bell, woof, woof, peek her head to see if everyone is coming and wait a minutes or so, and she starts the ring,woof,woof again and woof woof gets louder as she waits for all to come to kitchen table.
Playing is not just with siblings or dog parents or humans. There are all kinds of toys on the market. When you choose your toys, what do you look for in toys? How they works? Sound? Size? Shapes? Durable or not so durable materials?
I think that it is good base to get your dogs toys based on how they like to play with toys. Also good to have variety of toys that encourage all kinds of play pattern. Toys can be good mental exercise objects, and good to avoid them feel bored, and curb the behavior.
For example, if your dogs love to shake toys, floppy toys may interests your dogs. If they love to chew toys, you may look toys made with tough, durable materials. For chewers, Antlers are good alternative for durable chew toys. If dogs love to de-stuff the toys, maybe toys with no stuffing might be a choice. If dogs love to chew off and make hole in toys, over sized toys might be good because when dogs chew things, they more likely to use the back molar to chew off and if toy were too big to put mouth over enough to chew,chew, chew, to chew pieces off, less likely to chew off pieces.
This squeaky fox has no stuffing inside. Nose area and tail area has squeaker.
What kinds of toys Palette has? You can see her toys in picture bellow. We counted 38 toys in her toy box.
That is a lot of toys. Not all toys encourage the same play patterns-chasing, retrieving, fetching, shaking, herding, problem solving, chewing etc. She has many squeaky toys; some are small, some are big, some talks (meow), some grunt, some are floppy and squeak.. Since I have learned Palette loved to munch on toys sometimes when puppy, her toys tend to be puffy ones that is hard for her to use her molars to chew off pieces. Also, she loves to shaking toys so, you can find some floppy toys in her toy box.
Her favorite toy and my favorite toy of choice for her maybe different but, personally I like interactive toys a lot. She has 2 interactive toys. One of which is called Cagey cube. Cagey cube comes with 4 different kinds of shapes of squeaky toys inside the soft cage. Square,Round,Triangle,and nubby shaped squeaker. You will place them into the soft cage and dog tries getting the toys out. You can see how my dog plays here with clip bellow. If you were a blog subscriber or reading this from facebook, please click here to watch video clip.
The other interactive toy is called dog puzzle pup and it is a ring toy. There are 6 pieces of removable rings and each ring has squeaker in it. Dogs take ring off from the body part using paws and mouth, and they can play squeaking with removed ring. This is good toy I think, but may not be appropriate for dogs that can destroy toys in matter of seconds. Material may not be durable enough for them.
Although she has 38 counts of toys in her toy box, I do not put all toys out for her to play. I take 3-4 kinds of toys out every week and rotate the toys. That way, dogs can keep interests in toys longer.
Also, as a side tip, this is something I learned from box that interactive toy came in, but if dogs did not show interests in the toys, cover the toy with unwashed clothe (like inside the laundry basket) at least 12 hours to get your scent on to your dogs' toys before introducing the new toys.
By the way, I came across article on how to choose dog toy, and it said to give an old socks as toy, but I disagree with it. Dogs would not be able to tell ok socks, not ok socks to play with and socks are not toys. Don's give socks, new or old to your dogs.
Also, do not give toys that are similar shape to things you do not want them to play with, for example, squeaker toys of slipper shape. I have seen the toy shaped like human foot with squeaker in it, but I do not think it is good idea to encourage to bite and squeak foot shaped toys.
Weave pole (one of agility course obstacle) is another thing Palette loves to play
So, what do you look for in toys you will get your dogs to play with? What are your dogs' favorite toys? Do you have your own games you have come up with to play with your dogs?
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