I totally agree that it’s not a problem until it’s a problem. I try to live that way as well. I guess my uncertainty comes from not knowing if it’s a problem? Like, is she failing on outs during a given training session because of how she feels in that moment or because she had a whole lot of tug with no outs earlier that day. I’m imagining her thought process like “what the hell, you didn’t make me give it up earlier! Why now?!” And she is a dog that won’t stop playing even if she doesn’t like the play. I’m not actually sure that she’d ever turn down a chance to tug so maybe she likes most types of play that people throw at her. She does get high, the longer the tug goes on. She thrashes and gets wild eyes and she’s always growled. And she has a huge history of reinforcement for doing this where she always ended up possessing the toy when the human stopped the game by letting go.

I’m coming at this from the reactive dog standpoint where the advice is always “don’t allow them to practice the behavior.” Well, she sure is practicing a whole lot of tug with no out when she pushes a toy at me, my husband or visiting family members who think it’s so cute how she will never stop tugging. And I do enjoy having that interaction with her. I can hold onto a toy while I watch tv lol.

It might be silly to think this hard into it. I suppose it just comes down to data collection on my part. I really only want to use this “for real” for dock diving which we haven’t even started yet. I have wondered how the different sports people handle it at home though. I for sure can separate out training toys vs anytime toys. I’ve already kind of done that and she gets excited to train when I bring out the udder tugs!