Okay, we play chase the towel, we play chew on our favorite rope and we play chase the soft donut thingys that we have rigged with a leash (my kids are great at running these around) and we play with the ball. Still, seems like he is getting bored to me. Do any of you have any ideas on how to entertain this 10 wk old pup? Also, how much exercise is okay? I walk him around our block at least twice a day but sometimes I feel like we should jog but I hear this can be bad for them. Is only once around the block twice a day okay or would that still be pushing it? He has a kong but could care less about it unless it is filled with salmon flavored cream cheese. He and my female like ot play together but I haven't allowed too much of that because I don't want him to rely on her for fun but he will if I don't come up with some better material. Suggestions, please!!

10 weeks of age , is not a good age to be walking around the block, your pup is not even done with his sets of shots.I don't know about Arizona, but here parvo and distemper runs high.
I can't say that in our neighborhood or yours it's a likely a place for pups to catch diseases but I rather be cautious.
Also I don't know how big "the block" is but becareful how much walking you do with your pup.I know they look like they can play all day but if you look at your pup when he plays he lays down and sit often during play, not a continuous running or walking.
It sounds like you are entertaining him just fine, kids are good for that , I know mine were great help when ours were pups, does he play retrieve yet ? Why not teach him little things instead of just wanting to have him play and play.At that age I used to get a rag and made a knot in it and I would throw it and call him back to me with lots of excitement and have him bring it back to me and then I would throw another one and so on.That way I was getting him to bring it back to me everytime.Think of the little things you can teach him during play.He's never too young to learn .I also tracked my puppy around the house, I made little tracks with little pieces of meat and I would have him track it.Very simple stuff like that.It pays off later on.Like when I would put him at the start of the track I would say "seek" and He understood after a while that that meant put his noze down and track .To this day if I tell my dogs from a distance "seek" they all put their noze down and start tracking.Just some ideas for you...Work his little mind with small stuff instead of play play play, let him show you what he's made of.Your little guy is a ham by the way!

Angelique is on the right track. The "Find It" game can be great. If you wear out his little mind, the body will follow. Using their nose (and their head) can be very tiring for puppies.

Find it (where he finds an object), hide and seek, (where he finds a person) and follow the leader are all great games to play.

Learn to train with markers - I wrote an article on this. Use a clicker or your voice to mark a behavior. When you do this there is no limit to what you can motivationally train with your pup. It forces him to think and interact.

What you end up with is not an physical exercise like tug but a mental exercise that builds on your communication and relationship.

I talk some on this in my Basic Dog Obedience http://leerburg.com/302.htm

Robbin, don't forget that this is a very important time to be socializing your puppy - as Ed said in one of his DVDs, socializing is actually desensitizing the puppy to people, places, sounds, sights, etc. The pup is a baby and hasn't seen much of anything, everything is new to him, so you should be taking him out to various places for 10 to 20 minutes or so each time. He's still small enough that you can hold him while sitting calmly outside various stores to watch people come and go, see doors open, see cars go by, stuff like that. Take him to parks (NOT DOG PARKS), checking first for stray or loose dogs, if none, let him walk around on a 20' long line and approach various objects at the park. I took my pup onto the playground equipment at parks (keep the leash short so he doesn't jump off) and have him go up and down the steps and go on the slide. He loves going on slides. The first time down the slide, he landed on his face in the sand, second time landed on his feet, third time jumped off like a pro

He needs to see as much as possible, especially for the next several weeks which are critical for learning and which will be his foundation for learning the rest of his life. If at any time he is acting too overwhelmed or stressed, just remove him from the scene calmly and take him back home, try again later. But he probably won't get overwhelmed by much, if anything (he sounds like my puppy from your posts).

He needs to learn to ride in the car, now is the time. Better sooner than later. I use a travel harness with my pup, in the back seat. Or you can put him in a crate in the back if you have an SUV. I taught my pup to love the car by giving him treats when we first started going out. Back out of the driveway, give a treat, get to the corner, give a treat, etc, until the treats came much less often. He soon didn't need treats, he knew we were going someplace and that was enough for him. He does get very excited, but lays down when I tell him, with reminders every so often

Be careful with the harness, those stupid clips keep loosening up. My pup slipped out of his harness a month ago at the park (I would attach the leash straight to the harness for walking around). He was completely off leash - fortunately he comes quickly when I call him. So now I leave the harness on but attach the leash to his collar instead. I've also order a different harness and will see how that works when it gets here.

One more suggestion: if you know of a place where you can take your puppy to see different animals, like horses or cows while keeping him a safe distance away, that would be good. It's something I never did and regret it now. It's not too late for my puppy of course, but not only are those places are hard to find in the Phoenix area, but I have a feeling he won't take to these other animals as kindly as he would have, had I taken him several times when he was 12 weeks old or so. He tends to bark his head off at other dogs as it is.

Thanks for your thoughts Sandy I have been taking him with us to take the girls to school almost every morning. I haven't really taken him anywhere else because of the whole shots thing. He has two more series of shots before I can really get him out and about. Funny you should say that about other dogs. The only time I have ever heard him bark and I mean BARK is when he has seen other dogs. (poor little guy didn't realize it was my other two dogs standing at the back door, lol) and of course when we go to the vet he goes bonkers. I have taken him up to the end of our street a couple of times, making sure not to let him go off the sidewalk into anyone's yards and every time we do he has to a)hold his own leash in his mouth b)whines the entire time we are walking. Don't know what that is all about but that is what he does. I was thinking about taking him to Home Depot I guess you can take your dogs there. Still, I was wondering if that was a safe place to go either (with parvo threat and all). He does pretty well going anywhere, remember he took an airplane here from Germany, then had an 11 hour car ride from Las Vegas to Idaho Springs Colorado, then had a 2 hour ride from there to Conifer Co, then another ride from Conifer to Georgetown, then a 15 hour trip from there home. So, I think he's good in the car. Of course, he is always crated. Trust me, I am dying to socialize him out of the house. Sheesh, I'm getting bored with the same old games and stuff. I can't wait to take him out!!

Wow, our pups are almost like twins in their behavior. My pup just turned 7 months, but my memory of all the things you're encountering and all your pup's behavior is identical. Even the holding of the leash thing.

One word about waiting to take him places. I made that mistake, cause the vets had me so worried about parvo which was prevalent in the area cause the weather was good. It never dawned on me, I'm ashamed to say, to carry him certain places, just for the exposure. So I always tried to find places where I thought other dogs had not been, like the store parking lots and certain parks. I did take him to Home Depot, cute how that seems to be the place to take pups. The employees fawned over him and he scratched and clawed everyone to death. Embarassing as heck, and I couldn't keep him off people, even holding the leash with a downward pressure, mostly cause they bent down to pet him. He was a bit too big for me to carry him at that point, so I didn't take him inside cause I could see everything coming down off the shelves and the plants in the garden dept being chewed and knocked down.

I know it's not easy, it wasn't for me. They grow so big, so fast and I got to worrying "what if he does jumps on someone and claws them" (when he got bigger), or "what if he does this, that and the other", etc. But it's good your pup already rides in the car so well (forgot about your car trip to get him). At least if you don't want to take him out of the car in certain places, you can park and let him watch people go by, or pick him up and go sit on a bench outside a store or something.

Another place you might want to desensitize him to is a fast food drive-thru LOL. When the talk box turns on and I'm asked for my order, Lear barks his head off and communication with the person is almost impossible. It's good though, I don't go to fast food places hardly at all now. He also doesn't like anyone to come up to the car window and was like that at 3 1/2 months old.

There's a horse rescue place up in the northeast valley somewhere, forget where but have the info. I was thinking it would be good to take Lear there if they'll let me.

Sandy, since you and I are in the same area, let me know what you find out about the horse place. I would love to tag along.

Since you say our dogs are so much alike, I wonder...did you have a problem with him biting? He bites all the time and most of the time he responds to me telling him no but sometimes he gets in these moods and won't stop. That happened today. My hands all torn up because he wouldn't stop and when I corrected him he just got mad and came back at me even more so I escalated my correction, he came back even more until at one point I finally had to take him down and hold his neck (heaven help me if this was the wrong thing to do) and even so he fought like a banchee to release my grib from him. I did of course release and then just sat there ignoring him for about 5 minutes with the leash only out about a foot so that he couldn't get away from me. Finally he sad down and relaxed. I said good boy gave him a pat and then got up and walked us into the house where I came upstairs and began typing this. He is lying down sleeping but not at my feet like he usually does. It's almost like he has to keep an eye on me from a distance. I read Ed articles on correcting and I'm hoping that my pup is not a soft dog. If so, I might have just ruined everything. Wah!!! Dang it, this whole thing seems to be getting so complicated. Still, I can't let him think that he can do whatever the heck he wants. Maybe I am just overthinking all of it. I don't know but let me know what you think. I can certainly relate to the "what if he" mode of thinking. I do it constantly it seems. I'm such a worry wort.

Same thing with me. When he'd bite uncomfortably hard, I'd "correct" him, but he'd get more fired up. So, yeah, why continue with something which doesn't work very well?

I thought of it this way. When he was biting he was already pretty jacked up. A correction (like a scruff shake) may be uncomfortable but it's rather vigorous and stimulating.

I took the route of making the correction *boring* and uncomfortable, as opposed to *exciting* and uncomfortable. I opted for a hanging from his flat collar (just the front feet off the ground a little bit) in association with my word for "no". If, upon putting him back on the ground, he'd go right back for my calf (which he was wont to do), I'd rinse and repeat until he stopped....while I also remained boring; silent, composed, and standing still.
*Edit: but in fairness to him, I wouldn't go about initiating rough-housing, bare-handed play with him, and then correct him for something I initiated. This was for his spontaneous freak-outs. If I initiated play, it was with a toy.

It wasn't a one day fix, but it was a fix, and it wasn't traumatic or relationship damaging for either of us.

But that's just me and my one dog I ever had.