Does your dog chomp your hand off when you offer him a toy? (Photo: Pitbull puppy playing tug of war with a rope toy)
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I’m a little early — and that’s a good thing, because these tips will help prepare you for the 14th (and beyond.)
While it’s certainly not mandatory to give your dog a new toy on every holiday, the pet stores make it difficult not to. This time of year, there’s heart-shaped rope toys, rubber toys, and plush toys. It’s hard not to buy way more than you need.
Overstimulation can become an issue for some dogs (Border Collie laying down with six toys and a bone)
Without straying too far off topic, I should mention that there is such a thing as too many toys, especially if your dog has access to all of them 24-7.
Is your dog unable to settle? Amped up and playing with toys all the time? Anxiously whining in your home? Guarding toys? Growling when you walk by? Try putting all of the toys away and only giving them to your dog when he settles down.
This can take a LOT of time the first time you do it, so be patient and hang in there.
The way you allow your dog to take toys from your hands speaks volumes about your relationship. If your dog rips toys out of your hands (taking your fingers along for the ride,) he’s getting paid for being a jerk.
You wouldn’t pay your employee for taking envelopes out of your hand and ALWAYS giving you a massive paper cut. OUCH! You would very quickly teach your employee how to take the envelope from you more gently, so what’s stopping you from teaching your dog to do this?
It’s time to stop paying your dog for disrespectful behaviour toward your fingers.
If you reward your dog when he is biting you (i.e. petting him,) he will continue to bite you (Photo: puppy biting man’s hand)
How to teach this:
Practice waiting for your dog to be calm before giving him the toy. By the way, YOU also need to be calm in order to achieve this.
Practice this activity with one of his older toys first. The scent of a new toy is enough to make most dogs SUPER amped. This is not the best time to practice asking for calmness if you have never asked for that before.
Encourage calmness at other times of day, like before your walks, and before feeding time. Reward calmness more often and your dog will begin to understand that this is the behaviour that gets him what he wants.
Pro Tip: Practice not being giddy yourself before handing the toy over. This is a hard one! If the toy makes you super excited, make all the cute noises you want WITHOUT your dog present at that time. After purchasing a new Cookie Monster toy for Magic, I sang “C is for cookie” the whole way home in the car — she wasn’t with me when I bought it. I got all of the “this is the cutest toy EVER” vibes out of my system before giving it to her. WHY? Because if I am super excited, Magic will also become super excited. I don’t need an excited Rottie. I need a calm Rottie. Calm Rotties listen to direction. Excited ones make mistakes (that are OUR fault, not theirs.) Same goes for all dogs, not just Rotties.
In the dog world, excitement is corrected. This is often why you see the really hyper dog at the dog park get chased away and pinned to the ground. It’s not because the other dogs in the park are aggressive or mean, it’s because excitement (hyperactivity) isn’t tolerated among dogs. When we nurture and reward excitement at home (by giving toys to hyper, bitey dogs) we are setting them up for failure with their own species.
Calm breeds calm. Panic breeds panic. Excitement breeds excitement. You get the idea. (Photo: woman calmly holding a red, glitter heart toy.)
Extra Pro Tip: Try doing this whole activity without using any talking at all, until your dog is calm and you say “Okay,” and hand them the toy.
I would love to hear how it goes.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Dog Leaders!
Alyssa
Photos by: Hean Prinsloo @prins_thefilmer (Pitbull puppy playing tug of war with a rope toy,) Mathew Coulton
@mattycoulton (Border Collie laying down with six toys and a bone,) Daniel Lincoln @danny_lincoln (puppy biting man’s hand,) Sharon McCutcheon @sharonmccutcheon (woman holding a red, glitter heart toy,)