Entertainment During The Day

[chuckandsteve]

I have posted a few things in the reactive dog thread. I have a foster who is dog reactive on lead, i have had him 8 months and am quickly losing hope of rehoming him.

Anyway he got on with my Staffy for about 6 months then they have a fight, nothing big but we called behaviorist, she could she no issues until a 3rd dog joined in to play with them, so we removed him, good for a month then another fight. So now they have to be kept totally separate when we aren't home.

So foster boy has a run down the side of the house, it needs some modification as they bark and carry on at each other through the fence. So we are going to put 2 gates in so we have some distance and also make it so they can't see each other... its a picket fence at the second.

Anyway I want some things for the foster boy to do in his run while we are out. As he is less reactive when he is tired, like after and 1 hr obediance class, but unfortunely we dont have time for this every day. Its about 14 metres by 2 metres and at the second we don't want it to be food related (till we put second gate in) so I was looking for some ideas?? Difficult requirements I know

[persephone]

soccer balls (leather)

sand pit /pile

small pond/pool with floating toys

cardboard cartons

a 'tunnel' of some sort ..

[chuckandsteve]

He might like the sand pit... Hubby might not but can always tell him after its there. Lol

[minimax]

Would a bucket or ice-cream container with toys frozen in water or a bit of chicken stock count as a food? Something like that can keep someone amused for hours, licking away!

[chuckandsteve]

That woul probably work. Reason i am avoiding food is they can still see each other and the behaviorist said we hve to make sure all resources are removed when they are together/ can see each other. Once the fence is altered we can use food

[hankdog]

I'm sorry for you seems no good deed goes unpunished. I have recently started giving my guy frozen kongs stuffed with mince. takes him a while and then he's really relaxed after. Could you give each dog one?

[Wobbly]

A trick I've used is to get a small but very pungent smelling treat (a little dab of blue cheese on a dog biscuit or something).

Put that in a small cardboard box and masking tape it up, put the small box in a slightly larger box and masking tape that up, and that in another box, I like to use a big thick box for the outermost one. If you think he needs the encouragement to continue tearing the boxes up you could put a biscuit in each of the outer layers (I'd probably affix the biscuit to the smaller box inside with a dab of honey or something to direct his attention to the next box he needs to open).

You can see a demo of the outer box being torn up in the first pic in my sig. XD

You could even make up a few of these so you can scatter several of them around.

It's only a tiny bit of actual food & it'll be so quickly gulped the other dog isn't likely to get jealous.

What does he like? If he likes tug or a particular toy could you tie it to the fence (not the fence adjoining his adversary obviously) and maybe he could play tug with that too?

I'd be using all the ideas in the thread so far that you feel won't trigger the other dog's jealousy to see what avenue of distraction suits him best.

Edited November 15, 2012 by Wobbly

[Weasels]

He might like the sand pit... Hubby might not but can always tell him after its there. Lol

If you grab a couple of clam shell pools from bunnings or big W you could fill one with water (plus ice blocks with treats/toys as suggested) and the other with sand, but they will stack away & not leave a mess when/if you don't want them anymore :)