Daisy's Favorite Dog Toys

This is Daisy. Daisy is a Rat Terrier. And clearly she's not writing this review. She doesn't have thumbs, otherwise, she probably would.I have never met a more independent and opinionated animal.Fortunately, since she can't type, it is fairly easy to understand her opinions about dog toys and games. Daisy is the kind of dog who likes and needs indestructible, chewable, throwable, and fetchable toys. We will tell you about a few the best toys for high energy dogs. And remember, a busy dog is an obedient dog.

(Note: Daisy suddenly passed away since the writing of this article. We miss her deeply, dearly, and daily. She was an amazing dog and there is no other dog like her. Love your furry family members everyday, because they can be gone in the blink of an eye. I am glad this was one of the first lenses I published. It is comforting to know that she can still bring a smile to someone's face.)

In general, rat terriers are loyal, active, smart, and playful dogs. They love to dig, “hunt”, and please their grown ups. Unfortunately, a digging dog isn’t pleasing to all humans. But the good news is, with daily attention and play, the potentially annoying behaviors of rat terriers are easily kept at bay.

Daisy's Vocabulary. She has a set of words that she completely recognizes. And some words or phrases that we believe she recognizes. We know that she fully understands the following: Get your thing (or get that thing) Biscuit Breakfast Daddy Pee-peeGet “your” thing is to bring her toy. Whichever one she’s focused on. It’s also what we say when we play hide n seek with her. Get “that” thing is usually what we say in the woods when she’s pretending to kill sticks, pine cones, and similar things. I don’t think she hears a difference. She just does what she does.Biscuit means a doggie treat.Breakfast means “are you hungry and ready to be fed?”. You can say as many “b” words as you want and she won’t react until you say “breakfast”. Then she loses her mind with happiness.Daddy means her two legged male parent and she knows that. His activity level is as high as hers. She’s partial to daddy.Pee-pee means what you think it means.She seems to understand the following most of the time, but not always. Perhaps she just pretends to not understand: NO! Sit. Stay. Momma. Let’s go.

Daisy loves to go fishing, camping, and swimming. I should clarify that she loves attempting to swim. Rat terriers aren’t known for their ability to float. Probably due to their trim build and lack of body fat. So we watch her closely since she will jump into bodies of water to fetch fish, fishing bobbers, falling sticks and similar. It is great fun to throw her lacrosse ball (which also does not float) into the shallow edge of the water and watch her immerse her entire head as she blows bubbles and retrieves her ball. She does not realize that she’s not a water dog. As she grows older, she finally likes to sit on laps. And she has always loved sleeping in bed between us, borrowed deep beneath the covers. You wouldn’t think a 7 lb, four-legged creature could completely hog the blankets, but she can.

This is Daisy and my son's boxer, Lady. They were playing keep away with a crab pot float they found.

Daisy's favorite toys include: balls, snack dispenser toys, chew ropes, and stuffed animals for shredding.

She loves the JW squeak ball. It is her favorite toy right now. She’s obsessive with it. She will refuse to eat if the ball is where she can reach it. This toy seems to be the right size for her mouth, she can squash it and it’s durable so it immediately rebounds. (note: please take care not to give your dog balls that are small enough to become lodged in their throat).

She also loves lacrosse balls. They are large, heavy, and nearly too big for her mouth. We do not use the lacrosse ball for playing fetch indoors as the downstairs neighbors would likely notice that loud thuds as that ball hits the floor. If you know how to use a lacrosse stick, and I do not, Daisy loves balls being thrown with that distance and speed. She also loves to fetch them from under water. Finally, on the rare occasion she has lost one in the woods, she often finds it on a subsequent visit. Sometimes the following year.

Snack dispensers are heaven for Daisy. Her favorite has been the Petsafe Busy Buddy Chuckle. It’s a smidge too big for her (you would think) but she loves it. We put treats in it and she lays for long periods of time with her eyes half shut chewing and digging at the treats. I think this toy has been very helpful in satisfying her ingrained need to dig since she uses her toes and toenails to try to “dig” the treats out.

The three toys listed above, the JW Squeak ball, the lacrosse ball, and the Busy Buddy Chuckle snack dispenser have been indestructible. She's the kind of dog that can peel the skin from the highest quality tennis ball in less than an hour. So it is important to have some indestructible toys to keep her busy.

Daisy also enjoys toys such as Chew ropes. While she is able to destroy them, they do keep her entertained for long periods of time. I have read that chew ropes help clean dogs teeth. She loves shredding them. Please supervise your dog with chew ropes if they are able to shred them as Daisy does. You would not want your dog to ingest the strings.

Rather, how she taught us.

How we taught Daisy to play hide-n-seek. We didn’t plan on teaching her this game. It started out by chance. If she were pestering us to play fetch with her favorite ball, one of us would try to “put it away” in a place other than her toy basket while the other of us had her attention. We began to notice that unless you put it far out of her reach, she would somehow find it and bring it to us.

Eventually, we began tell her to go in the bathroom and we’d shut the door. We would hide the ball. And when we let her out of the bathroom, we discovered that she would sniff around the house, searching, until she found the ball. We found that we had to hide the ball in more difficult places (including his work boots to help hide the scent of the ball).

Sometimes we’d forget that she’s still searching the apartment. Then ta-dum, there she is with the ball she’s found. It’s clear that she’s both a sight and scent hunter. When we play a version of hide-n-seek outside, we do it through throwing the ball into the highest brush or marsh grass we can find. If the grass is higher than she is, you can watch her stand on her hind feet and walk, front feet tucked, reminiscent of a kangaroo. We can see her visually scanning the area and sniffing the air from the higher vantage point.We love our rat terrier, Daisy. We love the energy level and personality.

If you are a dog lover, I hope you have found something here that is useful to you and your four legged family member.

Many people who meet Daisy have never heard of "rat terrier" before. It's good to know that there are so many rat terrier lovers out there. Below are just a few.