Play Me A Pup

In need of some peace, I made the obvious decision to play with the puppies.  I have a red squeaky football that's the perfect puppy size.  In the shed, sitting in my lawn chair I created some puppy mayhem.  And it was great!  

Luke is the clear leader when it comes to interactive play.  He's getting pretty consistent with fetching the ball and he just loves it when you madly squeak the ball at him before throwing it.  The funniest was when he would hold one end of the football, and Grace the other, and together they would walk in tandem around with it.  

Putting Luke back in jail, I gave Gracie some play time.  With Luke out of the picture she also became fairly consistent fetching the toy.  She wasn't as confident as he was doing it, but certainly was pretty good at it for her age.  Next, I tossed her back in the run with Luke.  I was curious to see if I could get the other two to interact more.

Ryder tends to want to run around and squeak the toy, but has no interest in bringing it to me.  And Diva likes to lay at my feet and watch.  With the other two removed this remained the same.  Ryder would chase it, play with it, but not retrieve it.  Leaving only Diva out, I tried to get her to engage more.  She was very interested and playful when I squeaked it around her, batting at it with her feet and mouthing it.  When I threw it, she'd run at it, but not want to touch it.  Each time she'd touch it I'd give her crazy praise.  I managed to get her to pick it up and bring it to me once.  But clearly she's not going to be much of a fetch dog.  

Tomorrow when I go to town for dog food, I think I'm going to look for one of those flat tug toys the agility people use.  I think she may like tug better.  Not sure what else to do, but definitely want her to play with me.