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How To Get Greyhound To Play With Toys


Guest kisstherain

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Guest kisstherain

Hi everyone! I recently adopted an ex racer and poor girl, she doesn't know what toys are and how to play with them. I bought her several soft squeaky stuffies, and I was wondering if there is a way to teach her to play with them? When I squeak them she is interested in the noise but doesn't want to take the toy. Thanks in advance for the advice!

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My first greyhound, Queen was never interested. I bought a BUCKET of used tennis balls and she would chase them until they stopped rolling and would just walk away. LIVE animals she would chase. We have both tree and ground squirrels and rabbits that show up along with some Ferrel cats. she made the tree squirrels REAL unhappy.

 

Conrad started out the same way, but I kept teasing him with the stuffies and he started showing interest. Now our mornings consist of our morning ROO, then he does is business followed by morning nap interspersed with charging the fence. When he is ready to chase balls, he comes over to my bucket and patiently stands next to me until I throw him a ball. I also throw an outdoor stuffy when he has charged the fence and scared another squirrel right out of his pine nuts

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I taught Summit how to play with toys right from square one. He had zero interest in toys. I basically shaped it with a clicker and taught him a retrieve. His enjoyment grew from being rewarded for retrieving to an actual enjoyment of the toy itself and now he plays with toys regularly and gets very excited by them. I did step by step videos on my blog. It's probably under the tag "Summit training" and way at the very beginning back in 2010-2011.

 

But aside from sort of "formally" training a dog to play with toys, many of them do start to play on their own as they settle in. But with Summit, he'd already been off the track a couple of years when we got him so I didn't think he was going to just up and decide to play with toys on his own.

Kristie and the Apex Agility Greyhounds: Kili (ATChC AgMCh Lakilanni Where Eagles Fly RN IP MSCDC MTRDC ExS Bronze ExJ Bronze ) and Kenna (Lakilanni Kiss The Sky RN MADC MJDC AGDC AGEx AGExJ). Waiting at the Bridge: Retired racer Summit (Bbf Dropout) May 5, 2005-Jan 30, 2019

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Guest kisstherain

Thanks everyone! I will try out some of your advice. I did buy one of those kong chews and I stuffed some peanut butter in it but she has no interest. I also bought one of those rawhide sticks and she has no interest in that either.

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Guest Scouts_mom

I would take her to a pet store and see if any toys interest her.

 

As for the toys you have already purchased, I would rotate them so only a few are out at a time and when others appear they will seem new and may interest your girl.

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It took Emmie a few months then one day she just spontaneously picked up one of those squeaky duck toys and started going crazy with it. Harvey has played with toys from day one and loves balls of any kind. Give her a chance - leave toys of different kinds around and, when she's feeling energetic try tossing them in her general direction.

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Just let her be. She will either figure it out on her own, as mine is currently doing (had him about 2.5 months), or won't ever care, as my George did. Had him for 7 years. He played for appox. a total of 5 minutes!

 

I was also told by a canine dentist that tennis balls are terrible for their teeth, echoing what Walleried said.


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Susan,  Hamish,  Mister Bigglesworth and Nikita Stanislav. Missing Ming, George, and Buck

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I had to train Monty to play with his toys (twice - he lost all memories after a series of seizures after his 3 months with us). I would get all excited myself, bounce around, and toss the stuffed bunny across the living room and make a huge romping party of running after it and picking it up and doing it again down the other direction. He followed me while I did this, wondering (no doubt) what the heck was wrong with his new person that she was acting this way, and when he actually beat me to the toy and picked it up I had a party and rubbed him all up and down his back as a reward and we romped through the house together as he carried it. I think it took about a week both times I had to train him to play before he got brave enough to pick it up himself, and maybe an extra week before he would always romp after it and get it. We kept the playing short and sweet at first (we kept the toy up when I wasn't working on getting him to play, because I didn't want him to destroy it if he decided to eviscerate it when I wasn't there to watch).

 

Now he doesn't so much play with the toys as when he does his in-house zoomies we toss them in front of him and he reaches as if to pick it up and then runs by it to spin and come back. Our other dog grooms them to death, though.

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It can take a while -- a while being months sometimes -- for a Greyhound to settle in, including playing with toys. As others have said about their hounds, my girl wasn't into stuffies until I bought what I call the stuffless stuffies; the flat ones with no substance other than the fur. She still doesn't play much, but when she does, she grabs a flat stuffy with lots of squeakers and sorta plays with it for about 60 seconds.

Edited by Feisty49
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My first greyhound had no idea what to do with a toy. I would gently toss a toy to him, and he watch it approach and let it bounce off of his face. Then he would give me a look that said, "Why are you throwing things at me?" It took my brother's lab to teach him how to play. He saw the lab running to catch toys and playing with them, and he just had to join in!

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