My Pets: dog toy

The Essentials For Teething Retrievers 5 Best Puppy Toys for Labs

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America's favorite dog breed is also one of America's toughest power chewers. These five toys have been tested for durability, interest and safety. Several of these toys float, making them ideal for retrieval training, as well as all round chew toys. Your Labrador Retriever puppy is guaranteed to love these toys for a long time to come!

The GoughNuts Stick is Guaranteed for Life

The GoughNuts Guaranteed Indestructible Dog Chew Toys

Designed with maximum safety in mind, the GoughNuts Dog Toys are made from premium rubber that is not as plastic tasting as some of the competitor's toys. The Original Toy comes in green with a red center. Their slogan is, "Green means Go! Red means Stop!" If your dog reaches the red center, it is time to take it away from him and send it in for a replacement. You pay shipping and a small handling fee for the replacement.

Cross section of the GoughNuts Dog Chew Toys

Here Black means Go, and Red means Stop!

Lab owners rave about the durability of these toys. To maximize your value and the longevity of the toy, go for the Goughnut Maxx 50 Ring. This toy has the strongest rubber of any chew toy on the market, and is available in both the stick and doughnut shaped designs.

Advantages:

Made in the USA
Floats in water; ideal for water loving Labrador Retrievers
Guaranteed Indestructible. GoughNuts will replace your toy for free when it reaches the red inner core.

Doughnut Shaped GoughNuts Three Sizes:

.75 Ring is offered in Green, Black, and Yellow - 3.75 inches in diameter and 1.3 inches cross section.

Original GoughNut Ring in Green, Black, Pro 50, Yellow & Orange - 5 inches diameter, 1.75 inches CS

MaXX Ring in Black, Pro 50 (distinguished with a yellow marking) - 6.25 Inches diameter, 2.1 inches CS

Stick Shaped Goughnuts in 3 Sizes

.75 Med Sticks in Green, Black, Orange & Yellow - Length 6.5 inches, Cross section 1.3 inches (for 10 to 25 pound dogs or used as a quick reward for larger dogs).

Large Stick in Green, Black, Pro 50, Orange & Yellow - Length 9.0 inches, Cross section 1.75 inches (Ideal for medium and large - 30-60 pound - dogs for play and moderate chewing).
MaXX Stick in Black & Pro 50 - Length 11.5 inches, Cross section 2.1" (Large dogs for play and moderate to heavy chewing).

Recommendation:

To maximize the lifespan of the toy for your lab, purchase either the Black Pro 50 or MaXX for extremely heavy chewers.

Best All Natural Chew for Labs: Antos Origins Natural Root Chews

All Natural Root Dog Chews are sourced in Spain

These long lasting root chews satisfy your lab puppies desire to chew on sticks, but are guaranteed not to splinter or cause digestive upset. They look and feel like very dense cork. Our "Sprout" size root chew lasted for 4 weeks with 7 growing puppies! That's better than any antler chew has lasted, and it won't break teeth.

The Himalayan Chews come in a variety of sizes. We recommend the Sprout size (3x4x4 inches) for Lab puppies and the Stump size for adult Labrador Retrievers ((5x5x6 inches). The irregular shape allows puppies to always find an angle to chew on the treat no matter what size it start out at.

Advantages:

All natural
Sourced in Spain
Will not splinter or break teeth
Natural toothbrush
Durable and long lasting
High interest for all dog breeds

Recommendation:

Antos Origins Natural Root Dog Chew Toy - Small for teething Lab puppies
Antos Origins Natural Root Dog Chew Toy - Extra Large for adult Labrador Retreivers

Nylabone Teething Keys: Best Puppy Teething Toy - For Puppy Teeth Only

We can't explain the intense interest puppies have in these teething keys, other than the fact that they really do smell like bacon. The introduction of these toys in the puppy pen caused a minor riot. Puppies were snatching them and guarding the toys from each other. If you have more than one puppy, get enough to go around with a few spares!

Advantages:

Made in the USA
High Interest
Encourages nondestructive chewing habits while satisfying the natural urge to chew
Softer material designed for teething puppies
Bristles raised during chewing help clean teeth and prevent tartar buildup
Different textures massage gums and teeth for better oral health

Warning: These are designed specifically for puppy teeth. Remove these toys from puppies once the adult molars erupt. Not recommend in households with adult dogs present.

Recommendation: Purchase the medium or large size Nylabone Just For Puppies Medium Key Ring Bone Puppy Dog Teething Chew Toy for Lab puppies.

The Toughest Retrieving Toy - The Tuffy Ultimate Series of Dog Toys

Durable dog toy for fetch, tug and Frisbee games

Start your Lab puppy's retrieving skills with this durable ring toss toy from Tuffy.

How can this dog toy be so tough that it has lasted for years, when other indestructible dog toys made from fire hose material have failed within 30 minutes? The construction of these toys is, in fact, quite a feat of engineering:

Each toy is made with four layers. The first two layers are made of industrial grade luggage material, 1 layer of plastic coating, and the outer layer is made of soft fleece on the outside. All of these layers are sewn together to make one super strong layer of material.

Each toy is sewn together with 2 layers of quilted cross stitching and then 2 layers of linear stitching. After the toy is sewn together an additional piece of black trim is added to cover the four rows of stitching. This extra piece of black trim is sewn with 3 linear stitches to give the product a total of 7 seams.

Advantages:

Great for teaching puppies to retrieve: roll it on the ground, sail it as a Frisbee or use it as a tug toy.
It Floats!
Incredibly durable
Machine washable, air dry
Comes in a wide Variety of colors, shapes and sizes

At 20" Tall, the Tuffy T-Rex Toy can stand in as a companion for your lab puppy!

Recommendation: We recommend the Tuffy Ultimates Ring Dog Toy, Red Paws to start. It floats, making it a great starter tool for retrieval training and beginning Frisbee training. its soft edges won't damage teeth and gums.

Best Toy For Soothing Irritated Teething Gums: Chilly Bones

This durable toy stays frozen for a long time and cools burning gums during the teething phase.

This delightful toy is made with non-toxic, quick freezing gel covered with durable canvas. It has a slight vanilla scent, that seems to be appealing to most puppies. The toy should stay cold for over an hour depending on ambient room conditions.

The cold gel chills out red inflamed gums as puppies are cutting new teeth. Just rinse and return to freezer to chilly it out again. We recommend that you get two so you can have one chilling out while the other is in use.

Advantages:

Great for teething puppies or chilling out adult dogs during the dog days of summer
Promotes healthy teeth and gums
Simply hand wash and return to freezer
Inexpensive
Comes in two sizes

Recommendation: Purchase the Large size for Lab Puppies.

Bonus Recommendation: The Ultimate Retriever Training Kit

Retriever training kit for teaching duck retrieval
Coastal Pet Duck Training Kit

If you want to get your young retriever off to a good start and teach a soft mouth for retrieving fowl, Remington makes a complete kit for teaching dogs to retrieve both ducks and pheasants. The kit includes a retrieving dummy, scent for either ducks or pheasants, a 25 foot lead, so you don't lose your dog during training, and a whistle with lanyard for teaching commands.

This is an ideal gift for the new bird dog owner. It can be used for both serious gun dog training or just for a fun game of fetch. The long lead is recommended for any serious long stay training, as it still gives you control over the dog, if he breaks his stay as you walk away from him.

How Dogs Learn The Meaning Of Words

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The average dog can learn as many as 150 words, a fairly substantial vocabulary beyond sit, stay and come. Research with several border collies has brought those vocabulary numbers up beyond 400 words, and a border collie named Chaser has learned the names of 1022 objects, which he can differentiate and fetch on command. There appears to be no upper limit in Chaser's vocabulary lessons, as he continues to add words to his lexicon.

In the wake of such impressive results, researchers Emile van der Zee, Helen Zulch and Daniel Mills sought to determine the presence of a key feature of human word comprehension in canine learning. In the research article, Word Generalization by a Dog (Canis familiaris): Is Shape Important?, the researchers sought to determine if shape bias existed in dogs as it does in humans.

Experiments with human 2 year olds, have shown a "shape bias" exists in the learning of new words. Simply put, once the child associates a name with an object, it then generalizes the shape of that object to other objects with the same shape. For example, a child taught the word ball, when presented with a group of new objects, will seek other spherical shapes regardless of their size and texture. Children associate ball with round; do dogs learn the same way?

Using a 5 year old border collie named Gable, the researchers used random words, such as DAX or GNARK to create a word association with an object. Once the word-object association was made, researchers began to replace the familiar object with new object choices. When presented with new objects to retrieve, Gable sought objects that were similar in size to the original object, without regard to the shape of the object. As Gable became more familiar with the word-object mapping, he replaced the size preference with an association of similar texture of the object. As Gable better understood the word-object relationship, he relied on how the object felt in his mouth to determine the best choice for retrieval.

I am reminded of a scene in the film, Best In Show, when the toy, Busy Bee, goes missing. The pet shop owner offers up a toy similar in size and shape to the panicked dog owner. She rejects the new toy as it is obviously not a bee, but is instead a fish. The pet shop owner tries to convince her to purchase the toy stating, "I think the dog is responding to the shape and strips on the toy." Yes and no. The dog would respond to the similar size and plush material, but not the stripes or shape of the toy.

As a practical application of the research, those of you needing to replace a treasured toy should seek toys of similar size, texture and firmness. Ultimately, the dog is responding to how the toy feels in his mouth.

How this research applies to dog training is an interesting question. Vision is the primary sense of humans. Therefore it makes sense that we would rely on object shape in determining associations. Scent is the primary sense of dogs, hearing is secondary and sight tertiary; scent and sound were not presented as differentiating factors for Gable.

In real world dog training, scent and sound are both factors in our dog's learning. The smell and sound of treats and objects are likely to be confounding factors for our dogs, unnoticed by humans in our sight driven world. If you find yourself experiencing a brick wall in your training, if your dog seems to be stubbornly missing the point, consider that he may be responding to another aspect of the situation. He may have made an association that seems correct to him based on scent or sound. When you seem not to be on the same page, take a broader view of the situation, and perhaps change objects or locations.

Click here to review the research article Word Generalization by a Dog (Canis familiaris): Is Shape Important? The online article at PLOS One also includes videos of Gable's training sessions. Enjoy!

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