Me TOO! I want to play TOO!

We got tons of great advice on getting Leia to play, and over the last few weeks we’ve done our best to try all of these things. We tried giving her boxes and other non-toy items to play with, we tried slathering peanut butter on a toy to make it more interesting. We tried playing with the toy and letting her watch, and also associating a toy with pleasant things like a treat or praise.

To the left if you care to look is a great before shot. This is after she’d calmed down a little (she’s tucked one leg under her instead of just crouching.) I don’t know why the behavior, because I don’t think the past owner would have done anything to hurt her. I’m not sure why she acts the way she is. She’s just kind of an odd dog.

Well…about two weeks later…guess who decided she knows how to play?!

It all started with Rocco, who always wants to play, and can usually convince me to. He scraped his back feet, he stomped, he made his, “AWWWwwwWW!!” noise, and did his absolute best to look cute. He even managed to stand both ears up at the same time. Double perk has been rare of late.

I followed him to the toy he wanted to play with, and we chased each other around the house, played tug-of-war, fetch, and get-it. Rocco was having a marvelous time.

Eventually Leia wandered over to see what the fuss was about.

It was an unusually long game, I must admit.

Well Leia tried to climb in my lap while I was playing, but that didn’t work because I kept crawling around and standing up. Then she tried to stand between me and Rocco, but that didn’t work either because she got clotheslined by the toy.

Eventually, she came up with THIS:

I want to play TOO dammit!

It worked. She got attention, a lot of it, but at this point she didn’t care because it was suddenly hugely important that she have EVERY toy that ever existed in the whole wide world, all at once. I believe my living room will never recover. There are toys EVERYWHERE.

Oh well. I can think of worse problems!