motivational toys

I have been trying very hard to encourage/teach Sizzle to tug, well, every since the first day he came home but he nevers is a keen tugger. He will tug if he feels like it but that is not what I want. I want him to be able to tug/hang on to the toy when I show it to him.

When he was much younger, some people told me him being so dante and in the teething stage, tugging will hurt him, so leave it a bit later, so I listen to their advice. After he finised teething, I tried again, with various toys ... rope, rugs, sock, fleece ... anything you name it, I have tried it but he still show no interest in tugging.

I then read on Sara's blog (http://saralovesdogs.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-toy.html) a few weeks ago, she got Oreo this very nice "bunny fur tug" motivational toy from Cleanrun. That looks very interesting, so I thought I will get him one to try on, maybe with this rabbit fur, he might show interest and wanted to chase it. Unfortunately Cleanrun is out of stock, so I looked around and decided to choose these similar toys for him:

I keep these toys for training, so they are totally out of sight. When these toys arrived from America last week, I showed him the Ralphine Tug, he was so interested and started to chase and tug with it (eventhough he still prefers me to throw the toy so he can retrieves it). We play for 10 minutes and I quickly hide it away, so he doesn't know where I keep it.

I went back to Pachesham this morning for my weekly training, gosh! I didn't realised I have been away for 6 weeks and the boys were very keen, which is a good thing. Since there were only 3 students in the first class including me, so we finished off a little early so me and the other lady can do a bit with our puppies. Her red merle Border Collie puppy Skipper is a full grown dog (11 months old today), so much bigger than Sizzle, very bouncy and they have already started their puppy agility class at Pachesham.

We did some jump, jump, tunnel, jump, jump (just jump wings and poles on the ground for the babies), didn't we all enjoy it, both Skipper and Sizzle flew around the course with a lot of enthusiasm. I am very pleased with Sizzle, he didn't show any sign of nerves in the new environment and I just like his little wildness flying around the course eventhough most of the time I handled him wrong (basically I moved too fast when I should stand still!!!). Oh dear! He is a little too fast for me!! I love seeing him enjoy his training, he is a clever little man and he learns very fast.

Sizzle learns how to tug with his ralphine tug

he definitely prefers RETRIEVE