What does your dog do to entertain it's self?
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
(Be careful with the avocado. They are poisonous for dogs.)
@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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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!