Sock- Best Toy Ever!!!!

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
whoopsie, that last picture didn't come through.
Here is the toy school bus, a foam-filled rubbery feeling bus, that Buddy just adored.
It is made by Playskool Toys, and it is called "cushy cruiser" school bus. It rolled around by itself, it had batteries in it, and Buddy would chase it, and bite it, and then it made a noise, just loved this toy...
 

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
Also,
if you ever see a CLOTH toy book, made for infants, you know that kind? They are lil books with FABRIC pages, specifically made for toddlers to look at?

GET IT!
Nest time dog has to be home alone,
dollop a spoonful of peanut butter onto a plate, (so you don't contaminate the whole jar by going in/out of the peanut butter, and so you can keep track HOW MUCH peanut butter you are giving to a dog)

and then, spread lil dabs of that peanut butter onto each page of the book, and shut the book.
You could probably do this with cream cheese, or cheese spreads, too. I only use a LITTLE DAB on each page, just enough to make the pages stick together.


It takes the dog a surprisingly long time to get that book clean as new again. But he will, he will get that book allllll clean again!!:ROFLMAO:

This gives a lonely bored dog something to do if he is home alone.

I also can "hide" that book, and Buddy QUICKLY tracks down anything with peanut butter on it!
 

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
//REALLY?? O.K. then, I'll get some new toys for Shivon and start "the name game"//

Great! Dogster, let me know if it works the same way for YOUR dog, okay?

Also, i only introduce ONE (1) new toy at a time, no other new toys are given to him for a week or so, just the one toy we are teaching him the name of. Maybe someone could teach a dog the names of 2 new toys at same time, i've never even tried it.

Once Buddy knows the name of his new toy,
I can line up 2 or 3 toys, and ask him to get "Zebra".......or "Buddy, which toy is a ZEBRA?" This makes your dog look soooo smart! hee hee!!




Overtime, i can have him GO find Zebra, even from another room, or from under a pile of other toys.
 

Dogster

Honored Member
AWW!!! SOOO CUTE!!!! GREAT IDEAS TIGERLILY!!!!!:ROFLMAO: How can I thank you???:) YOU'RE SOOOO GREAT!!!!:D
 

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
<---blushes.
see, i just live with a dog who can not abide boredom, and, i am on tight budget, too. so i have to find low cost things to provide for this border collie. hee hee!

let me know, Dogster, if your dog also quickly learns NEW toy names, if you keep repeating it and repeating it, over and over, i bet he will!?
 

dogcrazy

Experienced Member
Carmel will brake any toy (except her gingerbread stuffed toy). So she only has a few toys and bones. Carmel loves to take off my socks but she will never put a sock in her mouth if it is on the ground. I will try name game.
 

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
i'm not sure why Buddy only "kills" his toys if he is bored or upset. Otherwise, he doesn't rip them up. I am lucky!
now if we leave Buddy home alone wayyyyyyyyyyy too long,
or if Buddy has had too many boring days in a row, yeah, he will kill a toy.
but so long as we keep him busy, he loves on his toys.

I know so many dog owners who give their dogs zero toys cuz the dog tears up the toys. Seems sad to me, wow, Buddy LOVES his toys, just loves 'em.

I know some other ppl who will not let their dogs have free access to toys, as they feel the dog will not obey them, or respect them as the source of all things, and that all toy play must be "earned", that allowing a dog to free access to toys causes behavior problems. I myself, think BOREDOM causes more behavior problems than toys do.

My dog would have to struggle against even more boredom if he did not have a box full of toys for him to choose which one he wants to play with next.
I think Buddy's toy play even lets him be creative, use up energy, and get out his feelings, too.
There have been some interesting studies on the 'therapy' of toy play for 'damaged' dogs like my dog, many experts do feel it is beneficial for 'damaged' dogs to play with toys.

Buddy's giant teddy bear, which is almost same size he is,
has been Buddy's best friend since the day we got him. I've re-stuffed and repaired this giant bear many a time. Buddy has to walk funny to be able to lug this bear around, it's too funny to watch, it is almost his same size.
Buddy carries that giant bear inside and outside, when he goes out, he brings "Girlfriend" bear with him, and he sits next to it out in the sunshine. Lolz, buddy *seems to* think his giant bear is "real" rofl!


Mayyyyyyyyyybe you could train a dog to stop ripping up toys, using Kikopup's positive interrupter, not sure, but seems like it. If dog start tearing toy up, maybe try this:

 

dogcrazy

Experienced Member
She never rips toys up when we are gone only when we are in the house and she is only allowed free access to her 5 bones, ginger bread toy and cuz toy without feet or devil horns (she ripped them off). At least she doesn't chew shoes, socks, walls, Guinea pigs or furniture. If I do kiko pups method when she tears them up she loses intrest in the toy ( she hates it).
 

Dogster

Honored Member
My dog doesn't rip up her toys. I had insisted (when we first got her) to buy a fox (a tug toy that squeaks with no stuffing). My parents thought that seh would DESTROY it!!! LOL!! I still can't believe she has it today!!! The only things that are missing are the eyes.:) My dog loves, Loves, LOVES squeaky toys!!! Every time I get her a new one, she spends the whole day squeaking it!!!:ROFLMAO: At night, she ALWAYS sleeps with the new toy...
 

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
yeah, my dog can lay on his back, with a squeak toy in his mouth, and squeak himself into nirvana. He holds it with his paws, and every now and then, re-arranges the squeak toy in his mouth, and squeaks away for a long long time. No idea why that is so much fun.

Dogcrazy, it seems hard to believe, if your dog was playing with his toys, and every time he began to rip it up, you made kissy noises to call him over to you, as seen in the video, hard to imagine how THAT would make him hate his toys......hmm.. I can see how saying a sharp "NO!" or
"EH EH!" or any scolding noise, sure could make him not like his toys,
as he'd begin to associate the toy with being scolded,
but kissy noises? kissy noises that he's been taught mean "come to me" would make him hate toys? wha?

My dog also grows bored with his extra toys and shows no interest in them overtime. His favorite toys, he always loves, but the extra ones, he will begin to ignore/grow bored with.
so i keep 2/3 of his toys stored away in the basement, and i rotate toys when Buddy has grown bored with his extra toys. Then they are interesting again, since he hasn't seen them in a long time.

My Buddy was kind of shy and reserved and insecure about breaking any rules when we first gave him his first toys, he just sat there, looking nervous about if he could touch them or not. so i put peanut butter on one toy, and parmesan cheese on the other toy, and gave them to Buddy, and praised him when he started chewing on the toys,
and thus, a toy aficionado was born.

Buddy does remove all plastic eyes and noses, right away, those are contraband in his toy box, he is very strict about "no toy shall have plastic eyes". :ROFLMAO: But, he spits the eyes out, and that is that. When Buddy first met me, he also tried to gnaw off my rings off my fingers...must have seemed like a "plastic eye" that should be removed! ha ha!!

Yeah, i gotta get a video of how Buddy WALKS when he is dragging his "Girlfriend" bear around, he can barely walk, too funny. HOw he manages to pull Girlfriend through the doggie door, is also amazing to watch, it's NOT easy, but he always does it.
 

tx_cowgirl

Honored Member
Staff member
Cute story that I've probably told before.....
When Z was a puppy, we were going through Petsmart walking down the toy aisle. Zekers picked up this giant moose toy(they still sell it, it's adorable) and tried to steal it. It was so much bigger than him, and he was just in LOVE with this toy. He loooooooooved stuffed toys when he was a pup, he just loved anything that he could snuggle. Then we got Mud, and she introduced him to tennis balls. It seems that now his tennis ball obsession has completely trumped his love of snuggly stuffed toys, lol...but it was really cute to watch him with his stuffed toys as a pup. :love:

How funny about Buddy and all his little toy rules. :ROFLMAO: No plastic eyes, gf must go everywhere with him, etc. Cute!

Mud will play with anything, but she has favorites that she always goes to. A week or so after we got her I bought her this cheap rubber tire at WalMart--she had destroyed almost all of her toys and I thought, well heck, it's cheap. It probably won't last, but it will give her something.
That stupid tire finally had a blowout last week. Her expression was hilarious, the middle of it came apart and she just looked at it all bewildered, then she looked a me like, "Mom, what happened to my tire???" The poor thing, she was upset for the first day or two. Then she continued to play with the rest of it until it got bad enough that I had to toss it....and wouldn't you know I can't find a tire like it. There are many other tire toys, but none quite like this one. Now she's gone to her second favorite, a little jack (like the "jacks" game?). She will ignore all other toys to play with the jack, except for her Good and Bad Cuz toys, which are her third favorites. When she feels like she's not getting enough attention she will grab a little squeaky ball and go to town on it. It's pretty funny. ^^
 

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
Yeah, i know what you mean, Dogster! My Buddy also grooms his toys, gnawing off imaginary fleas, which i do think cleans his teeth. I think that is why his teeth gleam, is the gnawing on his toys.

Buddy also has a small group of tiny toys, which we call his "babies". He grooms them a lot, and licks them, and nuzzles them, and carries them around in his mouth now and then, sets them down and gazes at them lovingly, as if they are moving. He keeps his "babies" upstairs, on his upstairs bed. If we take one, and bring it downstairs (HE can do that, be we can't) Buddy will quickly put that baby back upstairs on his upstairs bed, where it belongs.

Girlfriend Bear lives on his downstairs bed most of the time, if he is not fighting with her or humping her. When Buddy humps his giant Girlfriend Bear, i say "Buddy's sexy!"
and now, if i say "Buddy's sexy!" he will run over and begin to hump his girlfriend bear. MOST USELESS TRICK EVER..........

Buddy is one quirky dog. He has some hardfast rules on his toys. NO toys in the kitchen, ever. If we put a toy in the kitchen, he removes it.

His favorite toys that he plays with daily,
every single day,
many many times a day,
are his laundry baskets.
He has 3 indoor ones,
and 3 outdoor ones.
Buddy knows which baskets are HIS, and which ones are ours, although, i do catch him admiring my laundry baskets now and then...

I know i've told this before, but it is still amazing to me.

If we move an indoor basket outdoors, or vice versa, Buddy notices this right away, and puts the baskets back they belong and appears annoyed about the wrong re-arrangment of his flock. Buddy can tell the laundry baskets apart! then Buddy looks at us as if we are brats. Buddy has rules on most everything.

He HERDS THESE plastic laundry baskets, allllllll over the house,
or all over the yard.
for hours.


He head-butts them around and around and around...........for long time. Indoor or outdoors. His steering is actually very impressive, he can run that basket, full speed, right up to the table and at last moment, turn it just enough it won't hit the table.

or buddy drags them in his mouth, too.

He even stalks them, sneaking up on the baskets in true border-collie style, slowly walking up to the baskets, with his head held low....slinking along, sneaking up on his baskets...then he often attacks them, barking and rolling around with a basket. It's crazy. Sometimes he chews up the edges, but always spits out the plastic. He gets on them, in them, just has a great time. WE think that Buddy thinks his baskets are fake sheep.

Buddy moves one basket to a new spot, and then goes back to get basket #2, and finally, basket #3, and bunches them up all together,
and then he sits there, watching them, and looking around, Buddy looks very pleased with himself, panting and catching his breath...

then he hops up, and does it alll over again, moving the "sheep" to some new spot. Over and over, for hours.
New visitors to our house or yard, always ask, "What's with all these laundry baskets?"


We praised this behavior, when he does it. We think it is good for him, but we notice many of our visitors seem put off about a dog head-butting a laundry basket full speed through the room, over and over, and over,
but we find it entertaining. I'm sure Buddy would stop if i asked him to, but i think it's cute.

and almost every night, Buddy, without ever being taught to, puts away his "sheep". He takes them, one by one, and shoves them under the dining room table, as best as he can.
No idea why, but he does, as if putting the "sheep" to bed. We don't much use our dining room, so maybe that is why he chose that room, it is the quietest room in the house.
who knows.

but, it still amazes he does this, even after all these years. He'll play with a basket til it is in tatters, and then we get him new ones, WHAT a happy day THAT is!
 

dogcrazy

Experienced Member
Those story's are so cute!!!!! Carmel has a rule that she only bites bones on pillows and on her blanckets. After she bites or squeaks her cuz toy she starts licking it (it looks hilarious).
 

Dogster

Honored Member
AMAZING!!!! REALLY!!!:ROFLMAO: SOOO CUTE!!! Shivon also stalks, but she stalks CARMEL, at the dog park. It's sooo amusing!!! First, her head goes down....really.....low......lower..... then she starts to walk towards Carmel....slowly....stops.....walks.....even.....slower...... THEN SHE STARTS RUNNING AT FULL SPEED!!!! Shivon attacks Carmel, and that's how playtime starts.... As for toys, Shivon LOVES her toys all over the place. As soon as I clean up all her toys, she takes them out of the box, one by one...untill all of her toys are somewhere else.:LOL:
 
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