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Enriching activitiew for Injured BC


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Hi there,

 

we have a 16mo old, male, Border Collie named Claymore. He was recently injured in a dog fight at dog daycare.

We use daycare twice a week, and run in the desert every other day of the week to keep him running!

 

Unfortunately, the injuries required 2 layers of stitches and are located on his foreleg and chest areas. He was supposed to have them removed this Friday but he somehow managed to get his E-Collar and tshirt off and removed a few on his own. Now he has staples and another 10 days to go before those are removed.

 

Our daily walks are not cutting it for him and I am looking for some enrichment activities for him as Claymore is bored out of his mind and I am going to follow suit here shortly. Hide and seek is rough on the house(E.Collar) and chewers are even more frustrating (again Ecollar, he cant get his paws up to hold the chewie).

 

Any ideas?

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could you try a bite-not collar to give you the chewie option?

 

http://www.bitenot.com/

 

other than that, teach him some tricks! Get a clicker and check out a clicker book from the library and start teaching him silly things that he can do while injured. That will tire his brain out and make him calmer and happier AND you'll have silly tricks to show off to your friends when you're done. :rolleyes: Win-win.

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Ditto for the mind games. If you use the search function here and type in mind games or tricks or trick training, there are several threads posted previously.

 

A great book to have for a resource is Idiot's Guide to Fun and Games with Your Dog, by Sarah Dodson (?, not sure that's the exact right spelling)

 

Things like touching your hand with his nose, then learning to touch various items that you point to, (you'll want to keep all that stuff at a level that he can reach with out a lot of up and down movement of his poor chest and neck muscles) going to find another person by name, going to another location by name, ( where's the kitchen, where's the back door) will teach him how to think and listen.

 

If he's very social with people, inviting friends over to ooo and awww over him will also make him feel better. And for a few minutes at a time, you can hold a chewie for him or a filled kong that he's licking his dinner out of.

 

Good luck! Let us know how you do,

 

Ruth

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Or, you could send his invalid self over to hang at my house. He can hang with my invalid dog, and they can whine to each other about the suffering they're enduring. Meanwhile you and I will go have a beer and whine about the suffering we're enduring.

 

What? Not helpful? :rolleyes:

 

Seriously, though, yep on the mind games. When above-mentioned dog tried to remodel my fence with his shoulder at 16 weeks old I taught him a bunch of stupid tricks. I'm feeling rather uninventive on what tricks he can learn without using his back leg, so I'm rather stumped now.

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