Adelaide’s Favorite Toys (At 1-Year-Old)
We went out and bought Adelaide toys even before we brought her home. We went to pet stores (both small local ones downtown, and big ones like Pet Smart out in the suburbs), unconventional pet stores like HomeSense and Winners, the dollar store for toys that we didn’t expect to last very long, and online shops for specialty items - we’ll get into her upcoming birthday present a little later. There are a few categories of toys, and I’d like to take some time to discuss them - there’s Tug, Squeaky (soft and latex), Puzzle (both hard and soft), Chew, and even Non-Toys that she shouldn’t play with.
Tug Toys
Teaching a dog to love playing tug and fetch is the most time and energy efficient way to tire them out. Imagine the difference between running with your dog for 3 miles every morning, and letting them run to fetch at full speed (there’s no way Mom and Dad could run at iggy speed). This is especially true when we are stuck inside in this time and only have access to a backyard or the living room with furniture pushed to the side.
Almost any toy can fall into the Tug category, as long as it is strong enough to withstand both you and your dog pulling on it. The classic tug toy is a rope, sometimes with squeakers attached, like the adorable “Christmas Lights” toy we got for her last December. Other toys we tug with are her “Kong Wubba” which was one of our first toy purchases and has lasted very well, and even her squeaky toys and plushes. She loves her red rope with a tennis ball on the end however it is on its way out because she’s chewed off almost all of the tennis ball fuzz.
When she was little, she would play fetch by running between my legs, hiding between my feet and I would have to drag her back around to in front of me. Now that she’s grown up more and learned that we get to keep playing when she brings it directly to me, we have a good rhythm of “throw, fetch, return, tug, drop it, repeat.” She has also learned how much better it is to play tug while on a softer surface because she can get more grip on carpet. Now she always wants to be on a) the couch, b) her dog bed, c) a yoga mat that we’ve left out after an at-home workout. We have recently ordered a long rug and expect it to arrive in the next couple weeks - that should entice her to play on the ground with us, instead of jumping onto the couch with her tug toys to try to get us to play with her up there.
Squeaky (Plush and Latex)
Her favorite toy has been a series of latex toys from Foufou Brands. A llama and a giraffe. The giraffe squeaker has given out, so we got the llama as a replacement. These squeaker toys are excellent for grabbing on to, and she’ll play tug with us. But her favorite thing is to get the neck of the giraffe in her mouth like a harmonica and howl along with the squeak. There are theories online that this is her howling along with, what she thinks is, her fellow dogs, or that she’s grieving for the dying squeaking toy...or that she’s just howling with pleasure. There are plenty of videos of her doing it on her Instagram if you’re curious. Our little girl is a budding singer... just wait for her first EP coming out this fall.
Her two favorite plush squeakers are both food based - cookies and a donut. Don’t know if that’s more telling of Adelaide’s interests or ours! She has also been known to howl with these squeakers, but more often will toss them around to play by herself, or bring them to tug with us. And actually…these soft, plush squeaker toys that she has fallen in love with are actually both puzzle toys.
Puzzle
The milk and cookies toy is a plush puzzle toy from Zippy Paws. The cookies (there’s 3 of them) fit inside a soft milk carton with holes in the side that are slightly smaller than the cookies. She sticks her snoot in the holes to pull the cookies out. Sometimes we even fit her small purple treat ball in it because it fits and adds to the intrigue. It doesn’t take that much brain power, but more determination than your average toy. The donut is similar, with the donut fitting in a donut box.
For Adelaide’s birthday, we have selected a special toy that we hope will become a new favorite - a plush puzzle toy from Zippy Paws (makers of her beloved cookies) that is a bunch of cute little giraffes in a tree. Yellow is her favorite colour. It’s not just her favorite colour on Instagram, but she honestly gravities towards yellow coloured things! We picked up on this from an early age and really leaned into it. We hope this one will become as much of a fascination as the milk carton did over Christmas.
While I write this, Adelaide is currently playing with the other variety of puzzle toy - one that hides treats from her to find using her brain. This one (cheap from the dollar store) has 7 compartments covered with plastic lids that she has to flick out with her paw or lift with her teeth. So many of the toys are built for bonding between dog and owner, but it’s nice when she will occupy herself (so we can get some work done around the house, stuck inside).
Chew
Once she has tired herself out, Adelaide loves to relax with us on the couch. She will often just curl herself up in a blanket between us, but sometimes she plants herself on our lap with a chew stick and expects us to hold it from falling on the ground. Her favorites are a bully stick, a dried cow ear, or a hoof. These natural chew toys satisfy something within her she can’t get from squeakers or plushes - especially at 11-months-old with the last of her adult teeth coming in.
Non-Toys
When left to her own devices, she can get over-excited by things that aren’t toys like hair, socks, toilet paper, regular paper, remote controls, even her dog bed (which Jess b restitched 3 times in the first week of having this new cozy bed). The worst behavior is when she “forgets” that she’s not supposed to bite hands, and will try to either inch teeth down the tug toy towards your fingers - trying to push her luck until you let her bite your flesh. Or getting around the toy you’re shoving in her face to bite your hand instead of the toy. She is sometimes sleepy when she does this, but sometimes is over-stimulated by our play sessions and just wants to get her biting energy out on the only thing that will satisfy her desires - human flesh. In these times, she usually needs a time out - we put her in the crate or leave the room for a couple of minutes. This can even lead to her putting herself to bed, which means she really was over-tired and ready for bed, but lacking the way to tell us that.
She’s destroyed some toys - dollar store toys mostly. *Disclaimer* Not all of her dollar store toys have been destroyed, with some of them being her sturdiest and longest lasting toys (a pig squeaker, a yellow chick squeaker, etc). She even has some old dollar store hand-me-downs from Jess’ old family dog that seem to be holding up. The funniest is the pink ball that looks like a little coronavirus. Just wanted to say this because you don’t always have to spend a fortune and sometimes experimenting with different types of toys can pay off.
Either way, that’s why we bought inexpensive toys for her when she was young, and teething. We didn’t know how to keep her toys from being destroyed at the time but we’ve come to realize that it’s helpful to keep certain toys only for when we can play with her. We try our best to keep her toys in a tin so that we choose when to play with them. This has the added bonus of keeping her toys surprising to her. We’ve also found that with her toys always readily available, she can get bored of them. If we’ve had them hidden away for a little while we can make them more exciting when we choose to use them.
We need to figure out the best way to keep her from biting at the edges of her new bed because we know she loves curling up underneath the attached blanket. Right now she can’t help but nibble at the seams and pull at the loose threads she finds like the fuzz off of a tennis ball. For now, we have resorted back to the pile of blankets we gave her to keep in her pen - and from what we’ve heard from other iggy owners, that might be the best solution into the future.
When we are on the computer, on the couch, or scrolling Instagram with our morning coffee, she would much rather our attention be solely on her. She will bring us a toy and put it directly between the phone and our eyes. Having worked on a strong game of fetch with her from an early age, we can now play without even getting up (which is much appreciated on days when she wakes us up before dawn). We knew a variety of toys would be a key component to giving her an enjoyable life - they don’t have to be expensive, we just have to make them fun and have a good time right along side her.