[selzer]

Babs will be 9 in August. Her litter sister, Jenna, loves toys. She guts them. She plays with them. She gives them to Joy who will eat them if I do not get them away from her quick enough. But Babs she acts like toys are beneath her, and pretty much has always acted that way.

Today, I glanced in the living room, and Babs' tail was doing a perfect circle, and I heard a few squeaks. She was playing with a toy on the floor. I was watching from the other room, and she noticed and came trotting in without the toy.

I told her that she can play with it. I like her to play with it. It makes me happy. But no. She was done. She would sit on her armchair in my study.

I went in the other room and picked up the toy, and took it to the bedroom. I threw it on the bed. She acted like it was poison.

Why? Why does she only want to play with a toy if I am not there? It's weird.

 

[Pax8]

It could very well just depend on the individual dog's personality or her past experience in relation to toys. When I was around my ranch dogs, I had two that did not like toys.

The older one, Max, came from an abusive background and nearly got his head caved in with a shovel for squeaking toys when he was a puppy. So he just never played with toys ever again.

One of my others, Colby, just had no interest as long as I was around. I have a theory that he was just much more focused on interacting directly with me than using a toy to interact with me. He would run through his commands, follow me all around the ranch, work the cattle with me no problem, but he just didn't find toys rewarding or fun. I think he might have carried a rope bone or stick around a couple times when I wasn't there, but the second I got there he was just too focused on me to care about a toy.

I'd be interested to know if Babs ever uses toys around other people or is it just you? Not in a bad way, just wondering if maybe she finds you more interesting than her toys when you're around?

 

[Neko]

Lol I have no idea but it is a funny story.

 

[selzer]

Well, yeah, it's just me, unless the girls are over, but that is rare.

She likes to interact with me when I am eating. Once I finish, she turns tail and heads off to crash on my bed. Sometimes she will dance in front of Jenna or Odie's gates, "Ha ha ha ha, I'm in here, you're out there, smell my butt!" And if the girls are over, she likes to interact with them.

But Babs is ruled by her stomach. She is pretty quiet. She has always been lower on the totem pole than Jenna. I just figured her lack of desire to mess with toys was because she felt Jenna would clean her clock if she touched them. Like when Cujo came to Mom and Dad, and then all the toys belonged to him, and Pippy wouldn't even touch a toy.

 

[Rottendog]

I've got a little lab mix girl that brings her squeaky toys up to me, and pokes me with them to get me to play. She is so funny and interactive with me and her toys. Sometimes she will get this mischievous look on her face, grab a squeaky and just stand and squeak it at you trying to taunt you into playing. She will play fetch and will gather all her toys and go put them in her bed for safekeeping. Both she and my Flat Coat loves toys. All my dogs have always been toy pups. We have three LARGE baskets full of toys of every description in the living room for them. They know where they are and will help themselves to their choice.

 

[Bob_McBob]

My family's old girl is almost nine, and she's never had any real interest in playing with toys. She's aways had access to a large selection, and I've spent hours and hours trying to get her interested to no avail. She has tonnes of prey drive and will happily chase squirrels and other small animals. Throw a ball and it might as well not exist. Every now and then for a few years she would bring you a toy and excitedly fetch it exactly once; it always reminded me of Gyp from Only One Woof

 

[cethlen1621]

Lol our GSD rescue loves trying to put the other end of his tug ropes in our hands, once tried to put said rope end in a dozing friend's mouth since it was at doggie face level!
Babs maybe does just not find toys as interesting right now as her human. Maybe she will always prefer the human element. But it's hard to say. Keep the toy option out there for her.

Sent from Petguide.com Free App

 

[petite]

My old lady Daisy has never been interested in toys, she looks at us like we've interrupted her staring out into the yard if we squeak or toss one. Of course, once we got Fawn, who loves her toys, now Daisy will give a a slight effort to run in the direction of the toy with her. If it's been thrown too far she turns back halfway. If it's not too far, she'll go try to steal it from my pup.

 

[selzer]

Well, I bought toys for the puppies, as they are four weeks old, and I had just a couple in with them. I like to have a variety of textures and types. Well, I am giving toy after toy to Odie and Co. and Jenna is looking over the fence with her doleful eyes, clearly asking, "Me? Where's mine?" So I couldn't help myself, I tossed a large snake that had squeakers but no stuffing it it over her x-pen.

The next morning I removed the remains of the snake in Joy's kennel outside. Joy really is incorrigible. I don't understand why Jenna has to enable her though. It was a pretty, red, soft snake too. It was really kind of gross removing little red shreds of material and large bitten pieces of white plastic. Those squeakers were supposed to work whether or not they were punctured. That is probably why she took such an offense to them.

And Karma, I got this bee from my parents' house where it was unearthed from back when they had cujo. Anyway, the girls and I took it with us when we went for a play date with Karma to one of her elder brothers' homes. And I remembered it and gave it to her while we were there.

She ran out into the woods. I went inside to talk to the husband about dog food, and the wife came to the door with my nieces and said I had to come and look. Karma had dug a hole and put the bee in the hole. Deliberately. What's up with that? We started playing with it, and she got it back and ran up into the edge of the woods again and started to bury it again.

Weird.

Now Odie has taken the squeaker out of the rubber ball/duck that I had gotten and is using the thing as a ball now. Weird.

 

[Juliem24]

Rudy has a rule: "neither stuffing nor squeaker is allowed to remain inside the toy longer than 2 hours". But when he first came to us, he had no clue how to play with a toy. Took him at least a month to learn to play. Now, no toy survives except the Kong stick.