Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

Since Ki (the 3 year old Siberian husky) doesn’t get to go outside and run around freely (she has one of those extending leads) sometimes I like to play with her in the house. I’m also trying to make up for the fact that her previous home had two young children for her to play with and now she has an overweight, lazy, older woman and an overweight, lazy, young woman to play with instead. It’s been eighteen years give or take since our male Labrador whippet crossbreed Bernie died (I say died, he was put down because he was too old) so I can have only been about four or five at the time so, obviously I didn’t play with him much. For examples of how to play with the dog I use three sources of inspiration;
- Mum (mainly how she’s played with other dogs we’ve encountered and how she plays with Ki)
- TV (shows like the Dog Whisperer for example)
- How I used to play with the cats
And, using these three as a guide I’ve made a fun game I like to think of as Dog Fishing.
I get a ball of string and tie it around the leg of Mr Hoppity (I think it’s actually supposed to be an alien rather than a frog. We got it for her as a birthday present. It’s soft and furry with a squeaker in the middle and ropey legs for tugging). I throw Mr Hoppity across the room. Ki takes notice but doesn’t do anything yet. Then I start to pull Mr Hoppity along the floor and Ki takes interest so when I give it a sudden and tug she pounces on it. Then I make a game of throwing him around and pulling him back and untying the string then throwing it and then playing tug of war with Ki (she looses every time) until she starts to get bored.
When I throw Mr Hoppity and try to pull him back quickly it’s very difficult because the string tangles up. I’m contemplating making some kind of makeshift fishing rod for this purpose, then it really will be dog fishing.
Another fun game is to give Ki a tasty treat but hide it under something (I did this with her blanket once but it had disastrous consequences) so she has to kind of dig it up. When I used her blanket she kept bunching it up the opposite way to where the treat was and once she’d found the treat the smell lingered in her blanket so she kept trying to bite it or dig it up. It was still fun though.
I also like Doggy Show Jumping. I only started this last Sunday. Mum unloaded the shopping while I kept an eye on the dog (she gets so lonely when we go shopping and needs lost of love when we get back). As she heard mum go outside she rushed to the window so I tried to box her in by putting my feet up on the armchair. It’s a pretty small space I leave her but it’s not too small. She didn’t care until she heard mum come back in with shopping bags (She’s under the impression that plastic bags always mean treats) so she jumped over my legs to get to the door (it was shut so she couldn’t escape). When mum went out again we did it again so I took a video of Ki’s amateur show jumping, it’s quite fun, I’m looking forward to playing this Sunday too.
So then, here are some games you can try and play with your dogs. By the way, dog fishing also works for cats (it’s where I got the idea) but don’t expect them to play fetch .
Oh, there's also Chase the Dog Through the House. This is just a quick one from the kitchen to the living room and Dog Wrestling, not as violent as it sounds this one is mainly to develop what I like to refer to as skinship.

Bluebiird out.