So I have a beautiful 4 1/2 old czech female named Cali. She has great drive and very clear headed. I am training her using Ed's tapes and have had pretty good success for my first dog. I have a few questions about toys and drive training.

1. Cali has drive for pretty much anything I can put motion into, toys, bones, trash, my cat(just kidding). I was curious if I should restrict making drive to only the tug/ball on a string so that when she sees those items, she goes nuts. My thinking is that I sould restrict the drive work to only those toys so that she gets even more excited because she knows what is about to happen. Just wondering how other people deal with this and what they do.

2. Second, I am torn as to if I should have normal toys for her to play with when she is laying around. If I have the toys around, should I play tug with those toys, or should I yet again restrict this game to drive work. Also, if she has toys that squeek, will this lead to mouthiness. I never let her have toys when I am not supervising her and make sure that she only gets the toys from me, that they are not just laying around.

I am trying not to fall into that newbie trend of worrying about every little detail of training, but these are things that I have been mulling over for a while and just wanted to see what some of the pros do. Thanks for the advice in advance.

I was so happy with your post, then the cat was NOT a drive toy (darn) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Quite honestly, if your dog has what it takes to do the work, all the little things you are worrying about are for nothing. Some dogs need as much help as possible to do the work. The good ones pretty much just do it.