18 July 2011

Learning to tug

Here Miska teaches her puppies how to tug.  While many people used to think that tugging with a dog was 'bad' because it would encourage aggression, we know differently these days! Of course, the game of tug has to be under the human's control.  Here's a good answer to the question of will tugging make my dog aggressive from another one of my favourite and respected animal behaviourists, Dr. Ian Dunbar:  http://dogtime.com/tug-of-war-with-dog-dunbar-faq.htm . In fact, it's absolutely critical to develop tug drive or toy drive if you plan on doing agility. Here's a link to a great article on creating a motivating toy from one of the world's top agility trainers, Susan Garrett, who happens to live practically next door to me (well, about 1 hour drive) and if you don't know about Susan Garrett and her training, you should check out her blog and her website.  And from Susan, here is a list of over 60 tug toy ideas.

1 comment:

  1. I'm all signed up for Susan Garrett's new on-line Puppy Peaks course. I learned a lot from her on-line recallers course and really enjoy her attitude. Tugging is one of Riley's favourite rewards even though sometimes it feels like he is dislocating my shoulder :o).

    The video is very cute, so nice to see Miska having fun times with her babies. Miss Yellow cracks me up with her little bark/pounce at the end.

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