«Play has been an essential part of creating the bond which Kiki and I have.

I adopted Kiki when she was 18 months old and up until then she hadn’t really had any stable relationships with humans. As a result of this lack of positive experiences with people, she had simply learned to ignore them.

It’s been a long, hard road to build a strong and consistent relationship with her. However, one of the things that really helped us bond was undoubtedly playing together.

For Kiki this was an entirely new and unfamiliar concept, but she slowly learned how to have fun and how to trust me and my suggestions for playing together. The game that helped us the most on this journey was definitely the tug of war.

By taking part in these tugging ‘competitions’ with me, Kiki has learned to stand up for herself, increase her self-esteem and to work with me.

Respecting her time frames and building trust between us, we have also both grown to love playing ‘treasure hunt’ games, which are purely for fun.

We play with tug ropes, pull rings basically anything that we can get our paws on: the important thing is that we have fun and that we are playing together.

I strongly believe that play is a great way to establish a good, harmonious relationship, but that is not all: play also really helps us humans to understand our four-legged companions on a deeper level through observing their movements, scrutinizing their behaviours and any differences in their emotional state when involved in various activities.

That’s why it really is worthwhile to wholeheartedly embrace play as a way to live in, and enjoy, the moment, and not just see it as a way to get your dog to let off steam as playing together really does both human and dog the world of good.»

We hope that hearing from Roberto and Sharon has offered some new insight into the importance of play for your dog. To help you make play part of your daily routine, we have created a super versatile toy.

Pippen lets you:

• Play fetch on dry land or in water, as Pippen floats
• Play interactive games such as ‘tug’ thanks to its strong handles
• Exercise your dog’s sense of smell by hiding Pippen on the ground or hanging it on a branch
• Reward your dog during training
• Create a great motivator to encourage swimming and other physical activities

Pippen is lightweight, durable and super visible!

Its added bonus? Pippen is completely waterproof which makes it mould resistant and extremely fast drying.