What else do puppies like to do aside from eating? They love to play, play, and play!
Playing and active interaction with the environment are vital to a dog’s all-around development. This is why we find our puppies chasing our legs and picking up everything they can find. It is possible for us to channel this natural drive to chase, bite, and hold to our benefit. Toys and play are a great way to engage and build a relationship with our dogs.
While play requires us to be much more active and animated, it’s undoubtedly one of the best ways to generate good engagement with our puppies. Most dogs in professional circuits such as dog sports, protection and agility are trained to high degrees of perfection using play as a reward.
Games such as Fetch and Tug-o-war are popular and easy ways to build engagement with our puppies. In order to keep the spark of the game alive, we must ensure that the toys used at these times are kept unavailable to our pups otherwise.
Fetch or Retrieve is a wonderful game that involves teaching the puppy to bring back an object/toy to us. It helps provide an outlet for the chasing instinct prevalent in dogs. It can be taught by using two identical toys of equal value and is a great way to physically exercise our pups.