What does your dog do to entertain it's self?

edited November 2012 in General
Haku my 4 month old Shiba has brought an avocado in the house and has been entertaining herself for hours. Fortunately she's not eating it because the skin is not good for dogs. Last month my son got together with a bunch of his class mates to visited with his 8th grade schools teacher. He brought Haku along to show off his new pup and socialize her with kids. Haku discovered the basket ball and rolled it all over the class room. Then after entertaining everyone watching her she placed her chest on top of the ball and started to thrust her hip. Yes, she was humping the ball. My son was embarrassed. His old teacher jokingly asked him "What have you been training that dog to do?" She seems to love pine cones. Better that then the furniture. She dragged an 18 inch section of cactus full of 2" needles in the house. I don't know how she got it in without getting pricked by one of those sharp needles but she did. She has lots of toys to play with, I never know what she will find to entertain herself when Im not looking. She is a nonstop ball of energetic joy in between naps.

Comments

  • Bea likes to hunt. Kaiju likes to hump. Kilbun just tries to copy whatever Kaiju does :)
  • ChoCho plays fetch with herself lol

    (Be careful with the avocado. They are poisonous for dogs.)
  • Miyu loves to toss toys across the room and chase after them, though her aim sucks so sometimes she does wind up hitting one of us with it. Another favorite of hers is those paper cup holders they have at fast food places. Give her one of those and she goes nuts smacking it around the place, rolling on it, and ripping it to shreds.
  • @Calia ChoCho LOVES, BUT LOVES cardboard! I would let her play with it more often, but she eats it! Crazy lady...
  • @Calia its just a ploy I think she throws them intentionally like "see I can have fun with out you!"
  • @Hinata23 - LoL, Miyu doesn't eat it, she just leaves gloppy wet messes all over the floor. It's Tikaani I have to worry about when it comes to eating paper products.

    @cdenney - I seriously think she prefers to play with the toys by herself. If I take the toy and try to play with her with it, she's like "Whatevs, I'm gonna play with this instead". Needless to say, she seems to prefer playing chase games with us more than anything else.
  • Kuma loves to squirrel watch.... She will sit at the base of the tree for a very long time lol She loves to fetch. But her favorite thing to do when she is playing alone is to rip the stuffing out of any and all stuffed animals (her toys-she doesn't usually bother the other dogs toys). Yesterday she was ripping up clumps of grass and strutting around with a clump in her mouth lol

    Hachi will chase his tail..... a lot. I can tell he is bored and trying desperately to find something 'fun' when he starts chasing his tail and bucking like a bull and barking all at the same time LOL He loves to run marathons up and down the deck-into the yard- and back again. He loves pulling leaves off of the branches on the bushes by the fence. He likes to fetch but gets bored when doing it alone. And now he is obsessed with the fallen leaves on the deck. He picks them up in his mouth and tries to throw them around and such..

    Kameko's favorite thing is to chew.... on me lol She is still too young to self entertain for long. She does love anything knitted!!! She will play endlessly with knitted blankies/scarves/etc. And she will shred newspaper. She is a bottomless pit and is always hungry and always looking for a snack lol

    Jerzzee is such an easy going dog.... she love tennis balls, stuffed animals, chews, but mostly she just chills. She'll lay down on or near you and just hangout. She is more of a velcro dog with less independence.... She is also the professional snuggler in our house lol
  • Toki likes to gnaw at beanie babies. He doesn't want to destroy them though...he gentlly gnaws at them. I think he likes the texture of the beans inside? He is doing it right now as I type this, he has a giraffe beanie baby :)
  • Hmmm.... lets see

    Mirra - doesn't *seem to get bored. She's really just a dog who loves being anywhere we are, but at night time tucks herself into her bed. They spend a lot of time out in the yard and since we've gotten the Kai she tries desperately to be "one" of them, lol - mostly in regards to playing chase, tug and wrestle. It's really very funny. Her favorite spots to lay around are either in the snow or right by the fireplace. She doesn't fetch or play tug with us, with us she only wants pets and love. Trekking/hiking is really her activity that she loves for exercise with us and then of course snuggling on the couch (if the latter is actually an activity, lol). She likes to go pick our daughter up from school - or to go anywhere really for a ride, which is funny because her excitement level isn't all that drastic - usually just a smile and a subtle body wag - biggest excitement gets a woow ooo Siberian talk.... lol She's really low key, but loves to do outdoor stuff - we've always said that as long as she can do her daily husky run, she'll be happy. Now that she's older with arthritis she doesn't have to run so much but just trekking is what she enjoys.

    Kitora and Kunai I'll lump together because well - they do everything together, lol! They tug with each other, play keep away with a ball with each other - kill the outside rug together, wrestle together. When they are ready to come in, they crash for a while. It's seeming that Ki has a higher prey drive, so far. If the cat has been in while they were out she will track all over the house where he was, looking to see if he is still in there somewhere - Kunai on the other hand will only pester about the cat if he actually sees the cat in the house. Both of them (now that it's colder) will play inside gently - rolling around on the floor with a kong tennis bone, that seems to be their favorite of all the toys. They've killed 2 of those so far. They also like to pick our daughter up from school. We usually take turns and this day kunai goes, next Ki, next day Mirra.. etc..
    I haven't had them both off leash hiking at the same time yet - independently they are doing good, but I'm a little worried they'll decide to have a little TOO much fun together out in the big open, lol. We'll try them off leash together when Kunai's recall is a little stronger, lol.
    Oh, they also like tearing off Kunai's collar and then he likes to chew it up... luckily I have a bazillion collars that I had donated to me for our goats, lol unfortunately - he's on the last one... each one has lasted a lil longer than the previous one... ugh, lol!

    They are great dogs, and none of them really get into mischief. We had typical puppy mischief but seem to have all mostly outgrown that. Ki had a chewing on things that aren't hers (but our daughters) spell a couple weeks ago, it wasn't too bad, and that has stopped again.

    Lol, long story short - I think they entertain themselves mostly by playing with each other. We're really lucky to have a pack that thoroughly enjoys being and playing with each other all the time.
  • My Kai loves to hunt squirrels. My Akita loves to hunt birds. My new puppy hasn't found a drive for live animals yet, and I hope he doesn't.
  • edited November 2012
    One Shiba likes to hunt. The other likes to sleep in the sun.

    The Akita likes to get on the deck and survey his domain, or play with the Kai--chasing him through the yard. He also likes to fence fight with one of the neighbor's dogs. Only one--he's fine with the standard poodles that one neighbor has, but he hates the Border Collie mix on the other side.

    But my Kai. Oh dear. He has many, many things to do to entertain himself, all of them naughty. (one of my friend's nicknamed him "the whirlwind of naughty." Indeed.) He mostly wants to chew, but he prefers things we DIDN'T give him. His MO is to spy out something he wants (favorite things: books, pens, glasses, phones/cameras and he's obsessed with the poultry shears) and he waits til we turn away, then he leaps up, grabs the desired object and runs and hides with it so he can chew it. He's very, very good at being stealthy. And none of these things are in dog reach (or the reach of a normal dog). I've seen him literally climb up the bookcase like a ladder to pull a book off the top shelf. He chewed my camera again today, and it was in the middle of a fairly high table, but I'd made the error of leaving a chair too close to the table, so he climbed up that. He doesn't bother the books on the lower shelves. He doesn't chew furniture. But he can climb, and he can leap, and he's very opportunistic and stealthy!
  • @shibamistress oh my! Im so glad kilbun is not as sneaky as Leo!
  • Has anyone had any success with the puzzle toys?
  • My female Shiba loves them, but she's super quick with them, so it hasn't been much for long term entertainment. I probably have one that is too easy, anyway (I know when I was looking at them at a dog show someone asked what breed I was getting one for and I said Shiba and she said, oh, make sure you get a difficult one then for the smart dogs! But I went for the cheap one instead, and it takes Bel under a minute to do the puzzle part.
  • In my house, the favorite toy is an empty plastic water bottle filled with kibble and treats. They have to work to get the kibble and treats out, plus they get to crunch on the water bottle when they are done. When the bottle is crunch to the point they are going to start tearing it apart, it goes in the recycle bin.
  • edited November 2012
    Akuma has a basket that has all his toys and maybe a cow ear in it. He likes to take each thing out, tossing it around, playing with it for a bit then grabs the next thing until he has taken everything out. He's like a kid leaving all his toys all over the living room. He also enjoys watching the walking/biking trail from the deck glass door. Or if I'm sleeping/trying to sleep in and he's woken up he reminds me of one of those hit-the-mole games, popping up all around the bed trying to see if I'm awake yet.
  • Lol @ Akuma.

    Ike (Shiba), nibbles on stuffed toys. Farrah plays fetch with herself. Beebe throws fits where she drags her body along the carpet and makes obscene moaning noises. Grym (CO) rips limbs off the trees and brings them on the patio to chew.
  • @Lindsay.....I laughed aloud at Beebe! That is too funny! And Grym too!

    Leo just literally climbed up the bookcase, again, and pulled a book of the third shelf. That shelf is about chest-height for me. He was quite proud of himself, and looked seriously offended when I took the book away from him (again). I don't know if you other Kai people get the "offended" Kai Ken look, but his ears go sidewise and his tail drops.

    Yesterday Leo had a different approach to the bookcases: he jumped from the back of the sofa to the shorter bookcase and stood on it so he could look at the window better (at Toby, who was outside). I think he would have taken a book, too, if I hadn't moved him along off the bookcase.

    It's funny but aggravating. I've never had a dog that climbed up shelves before!
  • @zinja--I had bought Kaiju a hide a squirrel when I first brought him home. I went to work and the hub was supposed to watch him, but when I came back they were all headless
  • omg, mass genocide on squirrels!
  • Kai puppy Matsu entertains himself pretty well:
  • edited April 2013
    I can see your dogs love the snow.
  • Miko likes to dig faux holes in her toy bucket.
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