The Puppy Resolutions #2: Play more!

Learning from our mistake of not playing with the puppy.

We thought we were great dog parents with Emma, our first dog. We took the “100 people, 100 dogs, 100 days” advice VERY seriously. Every day we were out and about, meeting and greeting.

We forgot to hang out at home and just play with the puppy. We did a little bit of tug of war and ball tosses, but often we just set out the toys and hoped the puppy would entertain herself so we could have a cup of coffee or take a shower.

“The dog smells better than I do,” my husband said, a bit grumpily. His morning routine had been hijacked by the new puppy. I leaned in and buried my nose in the puppy’s tummy fur, inhaling the clean scent of Fluffy Puppy shampoo. Mmmm,” I said. “You’re not wrong.”

Slowly over time, the puppy lost interest in playing with us. It didn’t seem like a big deal until two things happened: we started agility training and the vet told us that Emma was getting chunky.

Suddenly, we had no way of reinforcing behavior that wasn’t food based. I couldn’t toss a ball over a jump to get Emma to drive forward. I couldn’t swap out turkey jerky for a game of tug to reward her for great recall. I watched other dogs in her agility class run entire courses for one frisbee toss. Emma only worked for cubes of aged cheddar.

We had to slowly build up her love of toys again. Every time she had the zoomies, I grabbed a furry tug toy and raced around the room. I hid chunks of boiled chicken in rabbit fur tug toys and tossed them across the field.

We are slowly making progress, although it feels like we missed a prime window of opportunity.

Lucy, the second dog, gets so much playtime. I gather the squeaky dog, the duck tug and stuffed capybara. I hide them all behind my back and then pull them out, one at a time. We do a game of tug and then I’ll toss the toy. As Lucy runs after it, I pull out a new toy and shake it about until she comes back. This way she learns to return to me rather than run off with the toys. It is a blast.

Lucy loves her toys. And Emma loves Lucy’s toys. There’s nothing like a little sibling rivalry to make toys valuable again.