Food Chase

I came up with a new game several days ago. Ironically it was for Woozle, who has plenty of toy drive. I just wanted to increase his intensity with food a bit. I have gotten lazy with him and lapsed into just handing the food to him after the mark instead of making him chase it a bit. It has some advantages because he can think clearer, but he was losing the "coiled-spring" look too.

I took him out in the yard with an old heel of bread and just started tossing bread pieces in random directions. I would throw a single piece, wait for him to find it and throw another one in a different direction. It soon became obvious that he sometimes needed help because he didn't always see where it landed. He has done lots of scent pads, so he would find it relatively soon with his nose, but it wasn't really what I wanted. I added pointing at the bread too. But now he's only looking at my hands, so I added the rule that he has to look at my face before I throw the bread. We have success! His drive is up and it's focused on me.

I played around with this for a few days before I even thought of adding Daisy. Sometimes it is really hard to leave one of them in the house, so a lot of times I just fall into the trap of training Woozle while having Daisy near me and doing something relatively simple and uninvolved (like a stay) and occasionally tossing food her way so she doesn't get jealous. But just as I was once again falling into this trap I had an epiphany. "Wait a second... Daisy can do this too! Duh." The beauty of it is it is just like fetch only with food and Daisy doesn't care for toys. It also doesn't have the "bring" or "give" parts so it really would work for almost any dog with a stomach.

So I alternated throwing for each dog so there wasn't any direct competition, but having them both participating seemed to up the energy too. Before long Daisy was dancing around like a doofus. Of course she isn't as fast as him, but she's a whole lot better at following the point. Yay! We found something constructive to burn off the old girl's energy!