Hey all, I thought I’d share my experience with Chachi, my handsome and debonair 6 month old Puggle mix.  It took me a lot of trial and error to find the right toys for him as a puppy so I wanted to share what we found with you all. 

Our Simple Exercise Routine

Don’t worry it’s pretty simple.  We go out in the back yard, play a bit, and try to do it at least twice a day.  I know, you want specifics.  When?  How Long? How?  Do you use a Duck and Sandals? 

A Duck and …. what?  Don’t worry I’ll explain it all below quickly and simply:

WHEN?

He’s typically looking to run around in the mornings, and then again in the late afternoon, depending on how hot it is outside!  We have a fenced in backyard so that’s typically where we do our running and jumping and fooling around.  

This is largely up to you though, whenever fits your schedule and his or her energy levels.  Most people opt for an early morning session. It just sets up the day well. Gets you outside in the morning, before work or whatever else you have going on.  After the running around he’s content to come in and relax.

HOW LONG?

However long.  It’s typically maybe 15-20 minutes in the morning and that’s plenty, then again in the afternoon.  Depending on what exactly we do hah. If he’s really riled up we can go longer or higher energy games.  Typically though we go by the 5 minutes per month in age, twice a day rule. So 6 months old, 30 minutes a day, twice.  We don’t do that all at once, it’s spread out throughout the day.  

HOW?

His exercise consists of any combination of the following:

Fetch:  A Classic.  He loves to run to get things bring it back, then fight over it which brings me to…. Tug of War

Tug of War:  Mine!  No Mine!  We pull on a sort of terrycloth sandal thing we got in a set of doggy toys: I got it for a great price on Amazon but you can check what it’s selling for now on Amazon. I’ll explain why the terrycloth sandal is so critical in a minute.

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“I’m gonna get you!”:  Basically… I just say “I’m gonna get you!” and run at him hah.  He takes off! It’s pretty funny. He’s fast.  Repeat as necessary.

Zoomies:  Zoomies are just naturally occurring bursts of puppy energy.  He’ll just start running, urgently. Ideally this happens outside, but now and then it’ll happen indoors.  Indoors he often wipes out on the hardwood floors and slides into a chair or something 🙂

The Duck and Sandal:

So the Duck is one of those squeezy toys that comes in the set I linked to:  Amazon Dog Toy Set.

You definitely don’t need that exact set, but the soft cloth squeezy is a big favorite so I would say look for similar. We don’t use it much for the actual exercise, but when he’s winded and needs to settle down, it’s often with that duck.  He’ll just lay on the grass and chew on him 🙂

The Sandal:  This thing is awesome.  The critical feature here is the terrycloth material.  He has little teeth, sharp little teeth. It’s hard for him to get a good grip on a lot of the really durable, hard fiber toys made for chewing on and such. 

When I pull on the harder material toys, they just slip out of his mouth.  Tug of war is impossible with them. The sandals are a different story.  With the terrycloth, thin rope like Sandal, he can really get a grip on!  So we can go at it… not too hard, he’s a puppy, but enough that he can put all his weight and still hold the toy.  

When they start out, they look like this:
   

Pretty simple,  but they’re not really going to look like that for long.  

The Broken Sandal:  So the one thing about it is it will break, meaning lose the sandal shape, really quickly.  But it’s fine because you can tie a few knots in it, and use it indefinitely. The knots help give it a bit of weight so you can toss it for fetch.  The string of material is perfect for your puppy to latch on to, and you can pull and play.  

Here’s what it looks like after just a few days:

Pretty rough (ruff?).  But it’s totally fine, because you can play with it just like that for a long while.  Mine still are going strong.  Here is Chachi and I playing tug of war with it:

 

And after a bit of pulling, fetching and chasing.. .he’s ready to relax with Mister Squeezy Duck that also came in that set.  Here he is:

So again, this set has both the squeezy for relax time, and the all-important terrycloth sandal for fetch and tug of war.  You can absolutely get whatever set you find and like, so long as they are similar material and design.  

Dogs love all different kinds of toys!  These just worked really well for me and Chachi.  The ability to get a good grip on something has made play time much more fun for both of us.  Hope this was helpful!!

Rich

Last update on 2024-04-26 at 02:54 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API