Dog Games!

How do you play with your dog?

I wanted to have a variety of games I could play with Rocky. Fetch and Tug-o-war gets old after a while .

So, just post the games you play with your dog here.

I'd appreciate it if you gave me some novice games. Nothing too hard, remember I'm a novice owner .

Anyway, just post your fave games to play with your fave dog(s)!

Well, I don't know if it's a game or not, but I started to play 'find' with Dante. I have my husband or kid hold him, and then I hide in another room, and call him, and when he finds me I yell 'find'. He likes it so far, and he gets really excited when he finds me.

Hide and seek was always my favorite..you can either hide a toy or yourself! The best of all way to reinforce sit and stay.what a treat for being good. A GAME! .once when i was very small i made the dogs stay at the top of the stairs.then i would go downstairs and hide..this time i hid in an old barrel that had molasses grain in it at one time..they couldn't find me even with hints..and sat down in the middle of the room and howled..trailing is fun too..get some anise oil in the spice section of the grocery..scent something and drag a trail..then let them smell the toy and go find it once they understand it can be quite a challange. Teaching my lab Charlie won me more than one field trial. He would run straight to the sight where the game fell..what the judges didn't know or anyone else for that matter is he was trailing the scent of the bird that the other dogs had brought back..they couldn't figure out how my puppy was doing an open all-age test! AS long as he wasn't the first dog out we couldn't lose. It was fair tho because even if he was the first dog..he was still the best..his line would be almost but not quite as good..as if he were dog 2
if you can teach him to retrieve..you can also teach him to count. First you throw one one way..and then one behind..after they get that down pat..you can throw three or more each way and see if they remember just how many you threw..you would be suprised at how many falls they remember and then when you try to send them after they have picked them all up they look at you like your a great big fool who can't count

Fetch is pretty standard to start with. I'm no expert but we taught Carey how when she was pretty young. We just acted like it was loads of fun then when she brought it back we made a big deal, so she knew she did it right.

My dogs have loads of toys, the love to play tug of war, fetch, hide the toy and they find it! Love thier kongs. They like to play fight we us, but they nip to hard for us!!
they have loads of chews too

Finding games should be a natural for Rocky!

I tried that with Shiva, but Hide and Seek with her is more like "Search and Destroy." She goes straight for things - through any obstacle and rips into whatever is barring her from the object she's looking for! We don't play that anymore, lol!

I have a loft with a lookover ledge sort of thing. Jasmine loves it when I throw the toys over the edge so the toy lands downstairs. She'll chase down those steps and back up like it's nothing to her. If I had to run down those steps 40 times, I'd keel over and die!

Don't be too disappointed if Rocky doesn't play fetch much after awhile. It's been my experience with German Shepherds that they don't see the point in it. Bear was particularly eloquent. He'd go get anything I'd ask him to, but if I threw something and asked him to get it, he'd sit down and look at me and the message was as plain as if he'd put it on a billboard: "If you wanted it, why on earth did you throw it away?" Purdue would do it a couple of times, then he'd bring the object back to me, show it to me, and go put it away somewhere as if to tell me he thought the whole thing was just unbelievably silly.

That's exactly what Rocky does!

I'll throw his little soccer ball and sometimes he'll just look at it then look at me with a face that says, "What'd you do that for?!"

At some later stage, Rocky might have fun "herding" big plastic balls. You can throw several of them out in the yard and show him how to "herd" them into a specific area.

Hum...TOki's favorite way would be me chasing him. He likes me to chase him and play tug a war. He doesn't like to fetch. He would fetch and make me grab it away from his mouth. He must be laughing soooo hard at me when I go fetch.