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Breena
Anything for a- meatball! | 
 | | Barked: Tue Dec 11, '07 1:35am PST | |  | |  | | Hi!
We just joined this group and Brainy Dogs! We're border collie mixes and we're really smart. We hope our mom will learn new ways to exercise our minds, so please give us all your tips!
Breena and Ronan |  |  | |  |
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Gray Dawn- Treader
Don't Tread on- me
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 | | Barked: Tue Dec 11, '07 10:27am PST | | | | | | Your human could put out 3 bowls, put them upside down on the floor, hide a treat under them (with you watching), and then move the bowls around. Then you could see if you could find the right one.
Also, good activities include Agility, Fly Ball, Obedience (which Border Collies and Shelties excel in!), and of course that BC favorite...FRISBEE, AKA Disc Dog Competition! These are all require a certain degree of intelligence to do well in and are great excercise, fun, and a workout for both the dog and the person. There is also a trick you can learn called "Which One?". The human puts a treat in one of his hands (don't let the dog see which hand!) and then holds his/her hands out to the dog. The dog will most likely sniff each hand, try to mouth the treats, and then paw at either hand. When the dog gets the right hand (when he touches the right hand with his paw) say "YES!", and give him the treat. | | | | |
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Brandwyn
Shelties- Forever! |
| | Barked: Thu Feb 14, '08 1:30pm PST | | | | | | Another way to exercise their bodies and minds at the same time is called free lance heeling.
It consists of heeling the dog and doing a lot of turns and U turns in the walk process. I do this for 15 minutes a day with each dog. It wears them out faster than just a straight walk. They have to pay attention a lot more about where you are going rather than having their noses to the ground and just walking. | | | | |
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Breena
Anything for a- meatball! |
| | Barked: Tue Apr 8, '08 4:34am PST | | | | | | Hi everyone, and thanks for the suggestions. Our own favorite activities are:
1. The lure pole! Wow, we'd chase that until we collapsed, if mom and dad would just let us. It's great exercise, but it's also a good idea to go for a longish walk afterwards so the dogs calm down. That's when they suddenly realize how tired they are!
2. Hiding treats all around the house. Not just for Easter! We can nose them up at any height (Ronan's specialty is a corner of a picture frame he has to climb up on the back of the couch to reach), but we sometimes don't find -- or don't think it's wort the effort getting -- ones in boxes.
If you've never hidden treats before, you start really slowly by first placing it in front of the dog and saying "search" or "find" or whatever your command is. Then put it, say, behind a table leg, so it's out of sight, but do it while the dog is watching, then say the command again. It doesn't take long for them to get the hang of it, but you've got to be painfully obvious in the beginning.
3. As a more advanced phase of #2, about a third of the treats are concealed in boxes placed up on a shelf, in an open kitchen drawer, a half-open closet, etc. (These are good places to hide treats by themselves, too.) Under an upturned bowl or mug is another good one.
The first time you graduate to hiding treats in boxes, leave the box in the middle of the floor and a little bit open so the smell of the treat is really strong. That way the only "trick" is how to get it out of the box.
This game does leave tiny bits of boxes all over the living room, but it also makes you feel like you're getting extra use out of your old cereal boxes and other packages.
4. This is one we haven't learned ourselves yet, but our big sister (who died before we were born) used to have a trick where mom tied a long string to a pig's tail and put the treat way up high, and she (the dog now) had to search for the string and pull it to get the treat. She really liked that.
Right now, though, we're working hard on walking nicely on the leash without pulling. We're pretty good individually, but mom wants us to walk nice even when we're together. That's not easy! My brother is so much fun!
That's all for now. Anyone else have any fun suggestions?
Breena | | | | |
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