I will be working overnight Monday night, and if there are no x-rays, there is not much to do! I measured, cut strips and tied up four tug toys to be braided during my downtime. (Hint - the braiding is the easy part as far as I'm concerned!) Three of these tugs are for coworkers who liked the look of the tug toys I have been making, and one will be a spare for my own dogs. Can never have too many tugs.
(want to try this yourself? Check out [ K9DIY: Make a hard core, square braid tug on TeamUnruly.com]2. Fleece Stuffed Hol-ee Roller
This is a super simple one, and perfect for your de-stuffer dog (Molly, I'm lookin' at you.) Not so perfect for your fleece swallowing dog (Perri. I'm lookin' at YOU.) All you need is a Holee Roller toy (we have three laying around.) and some fleece scraps (I had plenty of, thanks to Project #1.) And then, you stuff that toy full of the fleece scraps! [Visit "Leopold's Crate:Fun Activity For Dogs Who Like to Disembowel Their Stuffed Animals" for more details!]
3. Platform Surgery
The platform that I originally made for Perri has been undergoing some intense surgeries since I first created it. I saw length off the back, the sides. I saw too much off the side and have to add more. I recently made Molly a platform with the old half of Perri's platform, but it was not wide or long enough for her to learn on. Yesterday's project was to simply add some width to both of the girl's platforms. I had some scrap foam floor tile stashed away from past platform surgeries, so I measured out the width I wanted to add onto each platform and cut four identical strips of that size and duct taped them onto the platform. I have to wonder if simply making new platforms would be the way to go, but how wasteful would that be of materials? We don't have the cutest platforms in the world, but they get the job done!You can see the new attachments on the left of each platform. Getting out of control with the duct tape is optional - but really really fun!
[(My original DIY Platform post)]
4. Doggie Scratching Post
This was another super easy project that I pulled off the procrastination pile. I found a piece of scrap board in my garage, bought some sandpaper and duct taped it to the board (again, duct tape!) and got to work with the dogs! In the future I am going to buy some outdoor stair tread, but I wasn't in the mood to go driving all over the place yesterday for supplies.
Anyway, it was completely fascinating to watch how all three of my very different dogs learned how to do this! [Check out "Scratching Posts: they aren't just for cats anymore!" on TeamUnruly.com]
Ein caught on the quickest and was the only dog to progress to scraping both paws alternately. One downside for Ein is that I noticed he was really stiff all over after we worked on this for a little while, but I'm sure we will build rear end strength through this fun exercise as well as getting those claws whittled down.
Next was Molly. Molly caught on to the scratching really quickly. She of course started with paw targeting but scratching soon followed. Weirdly, Molly kept scratching other surfaces rather than the board! One of those surfaces included me! Those big paws have a lot of power behind them, it hurt (you can hear my anguished yelp in the video!)
I tried to see what Molly would do if I laid the board flat. This was way too much braining. What on earth could this human be wanting her to do? She had to settle down in frustration and think about it for a while. (I stood the board back up, we can try flat when she really has the hang of it.)
And last was Perri. And she was so very much like Perri. Tentative. Little sniff and stress breaks. She did a lot of scraping just her paw pads on the board, or she would make a claw motion but not actually commit to a scrape. Very interesting. She is so different from my other dogs. "Puppy, just go ahead and take a chance! Offer a behavior with all your confidence!" "Nope. I'm just going to do the bare minimum to make sure I'm on the right track,thankyouverymuch."
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| Dorky Poodle. |
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