Category: Dog Toys

Week In Review - Week Ending 03/27/2009

It’s been a busy week around here and Elbee continues to settle into his new home. Even though we are a thoroughly dogified home with Gavin, Annie, and Tosha already in residence, bringing a new dog into the mix always provides some lifestyle changes. For instance our other dogs are all herding dogs (to one degree or another) and have a similar play style when it comes to their stuffed toys. They will all eviscerate them from time to time but leave the stuffing & squeaky intact. Elbee, being a terrier mix, considers the squeaky a delicacy and will try to ingest it.

Another thing that can change over time is your dog’s response to a recall. Sometimes it seems that come when called is becoming more and more optional for them. This article from our friend Angela Adams of fun4fido entitled 10 Tips To Help Prevent Recall Problems can go a long way in helping you identify and prevent the lag time between recall & return.
 
One of the things that Jackie and I hope to do more of is travel across the country with our pets. Our friends Rod & Amy Burkert along with their dogs Ty & Buster are on the road in the GoPetFriendly.com Winnebago and visited Charleston SC this week and are now on their way to Savannah GA. You can follow their adventures on the GoPetFriendly Blog and you can research and plan your own trip on the GoPetFriendly.com website.
 
Over at Doggy Bytes our friend & raw feeding advocate Jim McBean tells us the story of The Terror of Cowichan Valley, a feral dog who raw diet put him at odds with local sheep farmers.

“The Best Secondary Reinforcer of All…” is a post from our friend, trainer & behaviorist Jaqi Bunn of DogPsyche UK and reminds us that even though a clicker can be our friend, our voice, facial expressions, and enthusiasm are important reinforcers to our dogs.

This coming week we have a very special Woof Wednesday guest, dog and exotic animal trainer Peta Clarke. Peta’s article is entitled How To Win Dogs and Influence Eagles. We really think this is an article you'll not want to miss, here is a excerpt:

Good relationships are the foundation of a happy life. Those of us who consider our dogs’ friends and even family know the immense value that comes from just having them around. Coming home to bright eyes and waggling bodies can make even the toughest of days brighter through no other reason that the way they make us feel when in their presence.
All those years of domestication give us an animal that has a longer socialization period than its forbearers and who will form strong bonds with humans with very little exposure. Dogs basically come programmed to adore us, seeing us as virtual superheroes with very little effort on our part. And is that not what being a friend is about? Making us feel loved and worthy of that love no matter what.

We hope you will join us this Wednesday for this fascinating article by Peta.

And finally as this week comes to a close, we invite you to help shape the coming weeks and months ahead. Tell us what you want to see here on DLD. What topics are you interested in? Where could we do a better job? We are really working hard to deliver helpful and reliable information for you and your dogs.

Cheers

Kevin, Jackie, Gavin, Annie, Tosha, Elbee

0 comments - Posted by Kevin Myers at 9:48 AM - Categories: Dog Toys | Dogs | Week In Review

The Immutable Laws of Finding Lost Dog Toys

If you’ve ever lived with a dog, then the following scene will be familiar to you. You’re getting ready to play with your dog and you ask “where’s your toy;” the dog begins a frantic search running back and forth jumping up and down but cannot seem to find the toy. It’s now up to you to repeal the laws of physics and somehow retrieve the toy from the black hole into which all toys seem to disappear from time to time. Some are eventually found but some never seem to be able to escape from the inky void.

After tweeting with my friend and fellow trainer Leslie Fisher (on Twitter aka lookwhatlabs) of Look What I Can Do Dog Training, we’ve come up with some immutable laws to observe when embarking on the search for the lost toy.

Lost Toy Law 1: If the lost toy is to be found under the bed, it will always be on the side opposite you. 

Lost Toy Law 2: If the lost toy is hard enough to stub your toe on, it can always be found by waking up in the middle of the night and walking barefoot into the kitchen.

Lost Toy Law 3: Apply the rule of Forensics. Follow the trail of stuffing / guts to find the body of the disemboweled toy.

Lost Toy Law 4: To keep your toy driven dog’s mind engaged, send them into an empty backyard to find an imaginary lost toy. The dog will come back with a toy you didn’t know was lost.

Lost Toy Law 5: When looking for spare change under your seat at a drive through window, lost toys seem to appear.

Lost Toy Law 6: For the lazy / smart human simply ignore the dog; they will bring you every toy in the house.

Lost Toy Law 7: Before blaming your spouse for that wet spot in the bed, make sure it’s not a lost toy.

Lost Toy Law 8: If your dog suddenly starts to squeak when barking, Veterinarians are helpful in finding the lost toy. (If the Vet finds an 84 karat diamond as well, you’re not real but a character in my favorite Guy Ritchie film)

Lost Toy Law 9: If a lost toy can truly be considered by a human as either stinky, disgusting, repulsive or gross, it’s not lost; it’s waiting in ambush somewhere.

Lost Toy Law 10: Backed by the rigors of the scientific method, this law is foolproof but also the most complicated and time consuming. If you really want to find a lost toy, take the following steps:

• Starting at one end of the house get down on your hands and knees.
• Crawling in a clockwise direction, look under and inside every piece of furniture in the house until finally you arrive back at the place you started.
• While still on your hands and knees turn around, your dog will be standing there with the lost toy in its mouth.
• Your dog will then drop the lost toy at your knees and happily lick your face in payment for all your hard work.

I have submitted these laws to Professor Stephen Hawking to ensure that we are not violating any of the laws of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics. In the meantime, if you have laws that you think need to be added to the list or can find fault with our sound scientific reasoning; please leave us a comment here.

PS: In spite of the methods “whispered” by some TV shows, we are sorry to report that no toy has ever been found as a result of “calm assertion” or “positive energy.”

3 comments - Posted by Kevin Myers at 6:10 AM - Categories: Dog Toys | Humor | Play