You Hold or Drag

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Herding breeds are particularly keen on chasing moving objects as it stimulates their working instincts to seek and gather up livestock. They will often chase traffic, joggers, farm animals, or wildlife if they feel unfulfilled and not able to use their herding instincts. If your hold and shake these toys, or drag them along the ground, they will help focus your dog's attention on the movement of YOU & THE TOY instead of these other environmental distractions (if introduced and trained slowly and carefully without these distractions to begin with).

I strongly recommend these types of tuggy toys for Terriers because they have a very strong hunting instict and the erratic bounce and movement ot these toys helps them to become focused on you rather than potential prey. Another benefit for terriers is that they keep a great deal of their pent up tension and adrenaline in their mouths and jaws and have a very strong desire to bite and chew things in order to drain this tension away and help them to calm down. Biting hard on to these tugging toys eneables them to dog this in a positive and interactive way with their owners.

Toys do not have to be held and tugged all the time - you can hide them in long grass, undergrowth, snow, leaves, and even underwater (but not when it is frozen). Then your dog will find it far more satisfying to use its amazing sense of smell to hunt and find the toy, rather than the far too easy option of seeing where the toy is thrown.

We also recommend that your use these toys as rewards for a job well done. For instance, if you call your dog and it instantly comes back to you, hold one of these toys for your dog to grab, tug and shake. The chasing of the erratic movement of the toy, combined with the draining of tension and adrenaline from its jaws, are the dog's wages and reward for obeying your command. This sense of achievement will help to build a bond between you and your dog, and make it far more likely that your dog will WANT to work with you rather than ignore you and not come back when called.

Please be careful that you do not over excite your dog by playing too much tugging games, as the build-up of adrenaline levels can make your dog over reactive, and sometimes even aggressive. A maximum of 3 very short tugging sessions or 1 medium session is the Golden Rule, then put the toy away in a pocket or bag, out of sight of the dog. This will enable your dog to switch off and calm down by sniffing the ground - resulting in lower adrenaline levels and then being able to concentrate on your commands later on on the walk, and the possibility of working for you once again for another session with the toy.