Rawr, a Dinosaur

I occasionally will get Elka a squeaky toy. In the past, she's been somewhat leery of them, perhaps because of how we taught her bite inhibition. In short, when we felt those puppy teeth, we would yelp like she was killing us and stop play. Immediately. She learned very quickly (but we all know what a smart girl she is!)

Cue her first squeaky toy. It made its first squeak, and Elka leapt away from it, and stared at it from a remove, "muppet mouthing", with a concerned wrinkle on the top of her head. Was she hurting it? But it was a toy! But she didn't want to hurt it. Cognitive dissonance in action. She's gotten a little..."braver"? More cavalier? And will now play with a squeak toy, occasionally squeaking it, but for the most part gentle enough on the toy itself that it doesn't squeak., but while jumping around and talking to it. So I got a squeak toy dinosaur at the Dollar Tree.

 Elka was pretty interested in the dinosaur, and took it without much prompting.

This was part of the "lay down, nose it, and talk to it" portion.

Winding down. It's amazingly hard to get pictures of a Doberman jumping around with a toy (that I'm willing to show you). You can also see a bit of the already fraying blanket that Elka may or may not have helped along a bit, but none of us have caught her at it.