Learn English – What verb do I use with ‘hobby’

You are familiar with "used to" and "would", when these two are used with expressing the habits or preferred actions in the past, among all of their other usages.

I have been used to tidying my room every Friday.

Here, "been" does not demonstrate the passiveness of the sentence; thus, the sentence is not passive. Instead, it's "the usual verb" (to be) that comes with "used to", in the present perfect.

It was noticed that they wagged their tails to him in the same way as the other dogs had been used to do to Mr. Jones.

Along with these sentences, Dickens wanted the readers to compare the world of "Jones" and the world "Snowball" is to build his territory on. In this example, he said that

Dogs wagged their tails to Snowball the same way as they did to Mr. Jones.

The dogs were used to doing this for Jones; plus, the verb must be in past perfect, so we get "had been used to".

Hope I've helped. :D

To sum up:

The verb to shy is used to express a sudden movement especially of an animal:

(shies, shying, shied, shied BrE /ʃaɪd/ ; NAmE /ʃaɪd/)

• [intransitive] shy (at something) (especially of a horse) to turn away with a sudden movement because it is afraid or surprised:

  • My horse shied at the unfamiliar noise. Her horse shied violently at a gorse bush.

But probably its more common usage is in the idiomatic expression:

shy away (from something):

• to avoid doing something because you are nervous or frightened:

  • Hugh never shied away from his responsibilities. The newspapers have shied away from investigating the story.

As noted there are other less common, outdated usages:

• "to throw (a missile) with a jerk or toss," 1787, colloquial, of unknown origin and uncertain connection to shy (adj.).

• "to recoil," 1640s, from shy (adj.).

Note also the expression coconut shy:

• a game at a fair where you throw balls at a row of coconuts and try to knock them down to win them

OLD, Etymonline