Other Dog Toys
21 June 2008After my last post For Dogs Gets Page 1, its time to look once again at some fun dog toys to get your dogs playing and exercising and having fun while their owner can join in too!
A coupel of posts ago I was talking about those amazing Kong toys for dogs and how perfect they are for dogs of all sizes to play with and also to learn how to chase a randomly bouncing and rolling thing taht has a mind of its own!
Well, lets turn our attention to the soft toys that dogs love to play with. Soft dog toys are fine for small dogs as their small jaws don’t have quite the same destructive power of a larger dog so they can’t rip them to bits so fast. That’s not to say small dogs can’t obliterate a soft toy in a matter of moments, just that getting them the right ones will at least prolong the fun long enough for them to eventually get bored and move on to something else!
I notice that there are some very good and also some very poor soft dogs toys available for sale in pet stores and bigger supermarket style retail outlets, but buyer beware. They’re not all as resilient as you’d think. Now, this is not a post that is going to name names, just a timely reminder that when you go to buy your dog a soft toy, check out the overall feel of it first. If it looks flimsy, then it probably is and won’t last five minutes with your dog’s eager energy!
I’ve seen some very good soft or plush dog toys as they’re also known that can be had for reasonable prices and also some rubbish. Likewise, even at the more expensive end of the market there are still some poor quality toys that you’d be better off leaving alone, or saving your money and going to one of the cheap shops and buying hald a dozen small cheap soft toys meant for kids for the same price - you’ll probably get more wear out of them!
Having said that, the middle range as far as price is concerned has some good plush toys for dogs that I’d certainly go for. Hate to sound like I’m harking on one company, but I cannot fault those Kong soft toys for dogs for being hardwearing and long lasting especially with my two little terriers!
Well, that’s where I’ll leave it for now. I’ve got some playing to do with two eager dogs!
For Dogs Gets Page 1!
10 June 2008This is a fast follow on from the last post Kong Toys For Dogs, but I just noticed this and so simply had to post it here. You’ll see from the screen shot below that this blog, For Dogs has actually made it onto Google’s page one for its main search term, “for dogs”.
For a bigger screenshot, just click on the image
That’s really great news for this place as I haven’t really promoted it very hard at all, just kept up with it and let plenty of people know about it. Top top it all, you might notice that we are beating over nine million competing pages for this page one spot and on the main data centre for the US, so I’m quite proud of this achievement.
Well, hopefully that’ll give the strange dog Ronnie and his wild step sister Daisy a lift in their popularity, as well as raise the memory of Chelsea to new heights!
Kong Toys For Dogs
8 June 2008
Kong toys for dogs has suddenly grabbed my attention, espcially as once again I’ve left it a bit long to post in here since my last post Summer Dog Haircuts. That’s because time constraints are really biting now. Nevertheless, there are a multitude of sites that need care, love and attention and this one deserves some too! So I thought I’d change tack a little here and talk about some interesting things that dogs like and get endless amounts of fun from. Kong toys for dogs are really cool doggy entertainment so this post will cover some of the better known and loved dog toys from Kong.
First of all, if you’ve never heard of Kong toys for dogs, you might be wondering what on earth they are.
Well, in the mid 1970s, the new brand of dog toys, Kong was born. Their philosophy was to produce dog toys that were resilient, tough and hard wearing along with features that would be beneficial for dogs to play with plus fun too.
The first Kong toys for dogs were the red, round sort of half rugby ball shaped things with a hole in one end. The idea behind the design was primarily to stop certain hunter-killer behaviour in certain dog breeds, ie when you throw them a ball it goes in a straight line teaching the dog to chase it down and “kill” once caught, by chewing it up into little pieces.
Kong dog toys are different in that when you throw it for your dog, it does not go in a straight line. Rather, it careers all over the place like a rugby ball but worse, never going in a straight line, so that dogs with that chase-down-and-kill instict cannot satisfy that part of their personality. Instead they have to chase the Kong dog toy all over the place constantly changing direction as they chase it. When they finally “catch” their prey, killing it becomes almost impossible because the high density rubber the Kong dog toy is made of is too tough for dogs to chew up.
Also, to add to the entertainment value, the Kong dog toy was made hollow so that you can fill the inside with dog biscuits or some other treat so that when your dog catches the Kong dog toy, it gets a treat!
As time went by, the Kong toys for dogs range expanded with different sized original Kongs plus other similarly resilient, tough and hard wearing toys joining their range of fun dog toys. The range now includes dental chews that are perfect for cleaning your dog’s teeth while it enjoys a good chew. There is a zoom groom toy that doubles as a fur brush but is made of the same tough rubber as the Kong toys for dogs, so if your dog wants to steal it and chew it up, well it can steal it all right but it won’t be able to destroy it by chewing!
The range of Kong toys for dogs also includes a black Kong, which is patented as the world’s strongest rubber dog toy. It is the same shape as the red original, just even tougher! There is also a Kong ball, which in my opinion flys in the face of the whole idea of preventing dogs chasing down their prey, so it is not a good toy for an attacking breed such as a German Shepherd or Rotweiler but its ok for the non-attack oriented dog breeds and is almost indestructible.
So if you want to buy your dog a long lasting, fun and entertaining dog toy, the Kong is perfect for all breeds as it comes in several sizes to suit the size of breed. By the way, this is not an ad for Kong toys, just a review with no links to their sites. I’m writing it because I have had Kong dog toys of various sizes for my dogs in the past and now in the present and they have all been the perfect dog toy. I will be looking at other brands of dog toys in future articles to balance things out, but Kong gets the first bite of teh cherry because in my opinion, Kong toys for dogs are the best and my personal favourite (and that of my current strange dogs, by the way!)
Summer Dog Haircuts
5 May 2008Apologies firstly for not being here for a while, but after my last post Dogs and Health, I got a bit sidetracked with that four letter word: WORK!!! Yes, I do have to earn my crust and as I write online I have to take the freelance jobs when they arrive, they take precedence over anything else.
So what’s been happening with our two little Yorkies since I last wrote in here? Well, for one thing as summer is upon us once again, they have had their summer dog haircuts and here’s a picture of them out and about to prove it:
They all of a sudden don’t look too much like Yorkies any more, do they? In fact, Ronnie looks more like a miniature doberman than what he’s supposed to be!
Daisy just turns her head away every time I point a camera at her, as she’s probably rather embarassed at her new hairdo! Still, it keeps them cool for the hot summer months that we experience here in southern Spain, although what often happens is that by August, they’ve grown a fair proportion of that coat back again and have to suffer the last few weeks of the Spanish heat with overcoats on!
I’ve managed to snap a few more pics of the two of them and will post them in later posts as its always nice to see them in the flesh so to speak!
Dogs and Health
6 April 2008My last few posts have been photo oriented, like the last one Funny Dogs, where it’s pretty plain to see that Ronnie has had enough of being photographed just lately, so I’ve left him alone for a while. On this post, dogs and health, its not quite what you’re thinking.
In fact, I’ve been contemplating the fact that I spend far too much time sitting in front of this thing typing away and not taking enough care of my own health with regards to getting exercise. Well, recently I changed that to making a point of taking the dogs out twice a day for good long walks.
The dogs, of course love it!
This all began a couple of months ago when I got really busy and wasn’t finding enough time to get out more than for just a quick walk around the block in the mornings before I started work. That led to very long days with not much movement in between and I saw myself put on two kilos in weight.
Something had to be done.
So I made a conscoius decision to get up and walk away from this thing in the early evening and give the dogs a second treat of the day (as well as myself). Where I live its very hilly with some nice steep hills to walk up and down, which exercise-wise is apparently much better for you than simply walking along flat roads. Great. Also, we have the choice to go further up where the views of the coastline are pretty cool, or go down to the beach and walk along the promenade, then back up the hill to home. Either way, the walks are about an hour long, which is much better than sitting here typing and drinking coffee to keep awake.
So the dogs and health are an important combination that every writer should have.
Funny Dogs
19 March 2008In my last short post For Dogs Who DO Have to Work!, I managed to capture Ronnie with my phone camera as he sat on my lap whilst I was at the computer and post the funny dog picture here onto this blog.
Well, there’s not a whole lot to put into this post except maybe another photo of that funny dog (or strange dog) Ronnie in another of his odd poses.
It’s like he’s giving me the look as if to say “I’ve had just about enough of you sticking that camera in my face, now push off mate!”
Poor bloke, I do point it at him a lot and he usually manages to turn away at the crucial moment. But not this time. Caught him fair and square!
It’s warming up here in southern Spain now, so it’ll soon be time for Ronnie and Daisy to go for their Spring haircuts, so the next batch of photos should be of much tidier and well groomed funny dogs!
