Fur

I decided it is time to transition Mimi to tugging with a real tug. Not that her bunny fur tug-n-treat isn't a great motivator, but I would like to have the option of using a toy instead of food, particularly in flyball.

Gosia will recall that it took me the better part of a year to teach Harry to come to a tug in flyball. He would come back plenty fast, but he wanted to run around with his prize instead of coming to me. With the chaos of flyball and all those dogs on the edge of meltdown, this just isn't a good idea.

Mimi has a different problem in flyball. She comes right back to me but she doesn't come back fast enough. Basically, she saunters back, double stepping most of the jumps and taking her time about it. I'm hoping that by building some toy/tug drive, I can increase her speed.

So I bought her a hand-made, braided, real fur tug (from this link, click on Tugs, then 36" braided, then click on the fur photo). The guy who makes them lives in Canada and does a lot of flyball. When he can, he buys old fur coats and cuts those up for the tugs. This is friendly fur, for the most part. The tug he made for Mimi is just beautiful. He makes absolutely fabulous tug leashes too. You have to mail him a check and if you are in the U.S. the shipping takes forever (thanks, Homeland Security!), but the quality of his products far outweigh the hassle. Iz and Harry went through two of his tugs but it took several years for those strong tuggers to do them in.

So right now this fur tug is the only toy Mimi gets to play with and then she only gets to play with it with me. Here's some video I made earlier this week. I tacked on a short bit at the end with Gracie where I'm playing "bad" dog trainer as defined by Susan Garrett.