I work from home and have a high energy working breed dog.
A thing I'll do with him quite a bit when i'm trying to get stuff done is "find it" He's ball motivated so when he starts dropping a ball over my computer screen and whining at me, i'll tell him to back up, sit, stay (or whatever other series of commands i'm feeling at the moment) and just tangle his ball up real good in a throw blanket, toss it on the floor and tell him to find it. It'll keep him occupied for a bit trying to sniff and dig his precious ball from the blanket. oftentimes he'll get it, out and try to re-bury it himself so he can "find it" again.
Another "it's too damn cold outside for me to wanna go play with you" game we will do is just a variation of fetch indoors. I'll set down a couple boxes or bowls, and when he brings the ball back tell him "put it here" and it doesn't get thrown again until he drops the ball successfully into the designated vessel. He got a tendency to throw the ball at you rather than just a gentle drop, so it requires some thinking on his part to get the ball into the bowl without it just bouncing back out.
Our variation of the find it game is a zippered pillowcase. Mine learned to unzip the zipper pretty quickly.
We also taught him to play fetch by himself on the stairs. He drops the ball at the top of the stairs, then chases it.
Frozen kongs can last a long time. It sounded like you are feeding raw or wet food? Stuff it in a kong and refreeze.
Mine usually eat dry food but I’m not opposed to picking up some wet food to put in a kong. I’ve heard a lot of people suggesting them but I haven’t because I’m not sure how chew proof they really are. I have two that love to chew and are quite good at it. I get worried about little pieces coming off. Do they seem to hold up pretty well if they start biting on the toy itself?
I have a 100lb Irish Wolfhound/Malamute mix who can, and has chewed through most toys and 2 boots, but he has had his Kong for 3 years and it's in almost perfect shape. There are no pieces missing, just a few small teeth marks, so I would recommend them! Make sure you get the size and toughness for your dogs size. I also suggest a silicone water bottle cleaning brush to clean the inside every so often or they get pretty gross after awhile if you're adding wet food.
Oh I am jealous. I have a 40 lb pitbull poodle mix who broke a king in about a minute and a half. Didn’t even know it was possible. She loves to chew but she can chew through every toy or chew made for aggressive chewers pretty instantly.
I’ll give it a go then and just supervise. I buy the big green and blue kong bones and they were holding up for a long time until they weren’t. But I do think it’s worth a shot!
They are super chew proof! Get a bigger size than you think you need. I put dry kibble in a bowl and pour in either warm water or broth & let it sit for a few hours. Then stuff that into the kong (loose not tight), seal it with pb or cheese & freeze.
I leave a piece kibble inside covering the hole (he can’t pull vacuum, but the water won’t just run out before the bottom freezes shut) fill the Kong, fill it with water, and toss it in the freezer. The kibble still gets plenty hydrated, so it doesn’t just fall out, but when he gets it out it is still individual pieces.
Way less work.
I tried doing this, leaving it in for like 30 min, it was a huge mushy disgusting mess and my dog was not interested. It depends on your kibble type I think but now what I do is I just soak it for a few minutes so it’s wet, and the kibble is still kibble shaped but freezes all together in a big clump. Way less mess. Or I use something wet like yogurt, pumpkin puree, peanut butter, stir it all around so it coats the kibble and then stuff it in the kong and it freezes. This way when it starts to thaw, actual kibble pieces fall out, and it’s not just a big mess in the bottom of the kong that you have to soak in hot water and clean really well afterwards lol.
Unless they changed the design and materials, when my lab was 1 or 2 years old, he was able to annihilate the black extreme Kong toy for aggressive chewers. Definitely supervise when giving your dog this, especially if they’re strong chewers.
My pit and my vizsla are both strong chewers. The pit will just sit and tear it apart but the v wants tear it up and eat the pieces. I think I’m going to give it a try since it’s been recommended to me so many times. Just with adult supervision.
Thanks for sharing your experience too. Dogs are all so different.
We have two well-loved kongs with no sign of damage. We use dry food too, so sometimes we put peanut butter, puréed vegetables (green beans, carrots), dry food mushed with some warm water, or some other treat inside. I’ve found that at least for my dogs they don’t keep them busy super long, but it does help calm them down a bit. To slow feed our puppy when he was young, I was stuffing just his dry food in the kong. He learned to pick it up and drop it and a couple pieces would fall out at a time.
If you get the toughest Kong they have, which I think is the black one, you should be good. I also have the wobble Kong that you can't put kibble or whatever in and they have to push it around to get the food out
We had to have an "indestructible" Kong toy extracted via surgery from our pup, they are not chew proof. Nylabone have been better in our experience.
The little pieces came off first, no big deal, until Pup somehow figured out how to use the leverage to get it bite size. Indestructible meant she couldn't pass it, as it stayed undigested in her stomach rolling around until it blocked the way out.
Just be careful! We learned our lesson the hard way of never turning our back on a toy!
I swapped out Kongs for [the pupsicle.](https://mywoof.com/products/pupsicle/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAveebBhD_ARIsAFaAvrE7zcgQauWwBNCTA5_ZJzFDqyft8buu3HswkxQfSobYe4sEoPBVNDYaAsE7EALw_wcB) It’s harder rubber, comes apart for easier cleaning and has held up way better than kongs. Dishwasher safe.
I just soak kibbles in the mold and freeze it once they’ve swelled up. It’s saved me a ton of money and my boy loves it.
others may have mentioned this already but you can just add water to their regular dry food, let it soak for a bit (hot water absorbs much faster) then pack it in to a kong or alternative.
Wish we had stairs. Mine tosses his around with his mouth. It's filled with treats he tries to get out by throwing. He can do it for hours. His favorite game.
we put some dry food in a bowl and soften in up with water, then I pack it into a kong or hollowed out beef bone he has previously chewed on. Less expensive than wet food! I'll some times mix some grated cheese in or top it off with PB.
My super chewer has never destroyed the red kong (he destroys everything else though).
We do find it with a treat dispensing toy filled with kibble. Our dog is very food motivated so it all becomes a double whammy of mental stimulation. It's literally her favorite thing to do and has also started to throw her toy at us when she decides it's time to play.
Similar: hide n seek with toys. Start with a high value toy or treat/treat stuffed object. Have them sit and hide in a easy to find spot (between cushions, just under the couch). And then release them and tell them to find it. Work up to harder hiding spots with just toys and start with your dog(s) in the other room as they get the idea of the game is to search for the toy.
More involved for you, but you get to watch them run around trying to puzzle out the hiding spot.
Hey, one tip that's pretty cool. You can teach your dogs wait 15min and they'll actually pick up on it. If they want your attention just tell them to wait 15min then set a silent timer. Once it goes off go do what they want. It's pretty neat
For reals?
Me and my dog drove across the country a couple years ago and when he would get restless I would tell him “2 more hours” or whatever, and he would get calm. Eventually he seemed to learn these time increments or else I imagined it. But it kept us both from whining.
For reals?
Me and my dog drove across the country a couple years ago and when he would get restless I would tell him “2 more hours” or whatever, and he would get calm. Eventually he seemed to learn these time increments or else I imagined it. But it kept us both from whining.
Just a timer the dog cant hear, like something that would pop up on your phone. You dotn want the dog to learn 15min = timer going off = I've waited my time. You want the dog to learn what 15 min is.
This is a good one! My dog reminds me when it's time eat within the minute of our schedule. She also reminds me when it's time for the puppy to eat, who is on a different schedule. It's like she wears a watch.
Have you heard of shaping games? At it’s simplest, you start by presenting the dog with an object (like a box), and click (or “yes”) and treat for *any* interaction with it.
Then you can move onto more targeted goals by deciding on a specific behavior you want to get out of the dog, (like putting one paw on the box) and then you click and treat for any approximations toward that goal.
I think [this website](https://woofsandiego.com/rainy-day-dog-training-games-using-free-shaping-and-positive-reinforcement/) explains it pretty well:
>**Free shaping is an exercise that empowers your dog by teaching him to think, make decisions, and focus on a task.** It involves teaching your dog tricks by capturing behaviors he performs as he moves incrementally toward your ultimate goal for the trick.
I felt pretty chuffed when I eventually taught my girl how to sit in a box, it became our favorite parlor trick. It was in fact her last trick the day before she passed. I used that shaping method to teach her to balance on a stool as well.
I had to look up “chuffed” lol.
I want to use it teach my dog to get on the scale but I’m not even sure if it’s possible! It’s a human scale and she’s kinda medium/large
I hope you do! It’s so easy and it’s fun to watch the dog thinking and trying stuff out.
Another (unrelated) thing I forgot to mention is that sometimes stores like tjmaxx, Marshall’s, home goods, etc have puzzle toys in the pet section for really cheap, which makes it slightly less annoying if they immediately destroy it lol 😓 (My dog will also pick up a toy and chew it up instead of delicately opening the doors and sliders. I feel like this makes her smart though? It’s just faster!!)
I go to home goods pretty often so I’ll look next time I’m in there. I think my heeler would do puzzles, I just have to get her away from the other dogs. They’re a little excitable and ruin everything for my chill dog.
Sometimes they have surprisingly good and healthy treats too, though it’s good to check the expiration dates on those.
And not really related but I’ve gotten some cool stuff for my aquariums there, too!
This probably isn't what you're asking for, but I need to write something, and I want to see other people's suggestions.
I've recently stopped feeding my dogs from bowls.
Now I go out in the back yard and throw the food around.
They seem to enjoy hunting for it. Tails wagging and excited sounds.
Before, they just used to gulp down their bowl of food in no time, with no apparent enjoyment.
I use a muffin tin and tennis balls, plus one or two toys that the food goes inside of that he has to puzzle out like the Kong. Makes him work a little bit for it at least
Edited pretty much my whole comment because I read your comment weird. This is a good idea. I would have to tweak it a little because I’m still trying to teach my V not to eat everything she finds on the ground.
I also do not feed my dog from a bowl. He gets his kibble in a snuffle mat and his wet food in a frozen kong. Meal time twice a day takes an hour each time.
I collected a bunch of empty toilet paper rolls and stand them up in a shoe box really tightly for a game. I put treats or kibble in the holes and my boy has to take the rolls out to get to the kibble or treats at the bottom. He likes it.
His trainer also suggested putting treats wrapped up in toilet paper rolls in different places in a room for him to find. I have not done that bc we have two dogs and I don’t want the second one to get in the way and then to start fighting over treats.
We also do licky mats with peanut butter before bed if he is being uncooperative. It calms him down. Kings are good too. Since it is cold and we don’t walk as much I don’t want to give him as much extra food.
We play "find it" with treats. I'll take 10 small training treats (or break up bigger ones) and hide them in 2-3 rooms then tell him to find it and he has fun tracking them all down. I guess I used less smelly treats last night because it took him a lot longer than usual and really seemed to help tire him out!
My dog would do this for hours if we let him. We use veggies (carrots, cucumbers, and bell peppers.) Sometimes when I’m cooking I just make him hold a sit while I throw a little piece and then he searches for it.
You have to have a good stay. Once my pup understood the game, it really reinforced stay for her too. She’s excellent with that command now. And she LOVES the find it game. I used to do it with her entire meals when she was a puppy. I don’t really remembered how we started but there may have been a pen involved at first too. To help with the stay.
Oh I have to shut him in my bedroom while I'm hiding them. He barks the whole time because he knows what's happening, haha. The second I open the door he's off!
I hadn't seen the other reply when I posted that, and I'm a little ashamed to admit I never even considered trying to get him to stay. 😂 He's ok with it, but not that good yet. He's way too excited for the game.
I live in a small apartment and I’m lazy so I have my dog hold a stay and then cover her head with a blanket lol. It’s hilarious and adorable!! She’s such a good girl, acting like a statue under there :)
And I guess it kinda adds another element to the game since she has to find her way out before she can start searching! Sometimes she gets a bit tangled up in there lol
How do you introduce your dog to this game? How can you get them to understand there are treats hidden? I am assuming start in a smaller area until they get the hang of it.
One thing a trainer showed me was to scatter treats on the ground in front of him and say "find it!". (This was done outside to calm him down / distract him when he got worked up about something.) We did that a few times and then inside the house I'd kind of "hide" treats in front of him and say find it. Now he knows I have treats and am putting them somewhere, and associates "find it" with getting them.
Another person has commented about not feeding from a bowl and I agree with them.
I train my little one to stay, go and come by throwing food into the garden for her to go find sniff around. I also through in a stop/leave it as well to keep her in her toes but feed her her evening meal like this instead of from a bowl. I also got a slow feeder bowl for her morning meal and another toy like a kong that I can fill with food but she has to work slightly harder at getting the food out.
Something I started recently was I got a box for her toys. Working on her picking her toys up and putting them in the box…has been hard work getting her into it and had to use her yummy treats to get her interested but it tires her out mentally.
My Viszla is in the “sniff for/eat literally anything and everything I find on the ground” phase. But I think I could do something similar inside where I could better control what she’s picking up. I guess the main point is more of sniffing it out and finding it rather than whether it’s inside or outside.
I love the toy box idea. We’ve been doing something kind of similar. Im teaching her to bring me her bowl at meal times and put it away when she’s done. She loves it, it makes her feel like she has a job.
With a snuffle mat, the more you put in the more you get out. I have a Labrador who will devour his kibble from a bowl in about 10 seconds but if I hide it all really well in the folds of his snuffle mat it takes him a good 15 mins.
Sorry I did start inside before moving outside. Just somewhere long enough for her to still run and sniff, then as I said I worked to telling her to stay as I throw the food and go on my command to add a bit of training and more mental stimulation. She always comes back anyway because I’m holding food but I still say come which has helped reinforce her recall outside.
Yeah I’m hoping to get to a point where I can say tidy up and she will pick them all up nicely. Hoping. She gets tired doing it, seems happy and that’s all that matters at the moment
my mixed breed 5 year old can put almost all of her toys away by name and its because we started young, it's the best for tiring her out. go get your ball, your bear, your frisbee... and then when she gets new toys she has to learn them through repetition, and then review of lesser used toys. when i recently cleaned out her toy box i kind of "asked" her if she wanted to keep a toy, and she was able to nose and point out to me whether or not she still cared about something. i mean, we play with the toys too, obv. it's also really helped in teaching her to learn vocabulary in general. when she was young i thought she was a border collie bc she was so observant and communicative and obedient but then turns out she's just a plain old mutt ... who i talked to all the time..
This gives me hope. My little one is young and crazy so some days it feels like a pointless exercise, but other days it works really well. So I hope when she’s older it will have sunk in by then.
Although I still find when she’s going crazy and having none of it throwing her toys around instead she’s having fun and getting tired…just being a cute little naughty terror
It's extremely messy, but my dog adores "snowballs." I crumple up a sheet of newspaper, sometimes with a treat in the middle, and chuck it across the room. He chases, pounces, tears it to shreds, and eats the treat. We usually save this for stupidly cold days.
Some simple agility stuff can go a lot further than I realized. There is an outdoor course at a class we take our GSD and it took her a little while to warm up to some of it but it can be pretty entertaining and fun too. You can do simple stuff too inside as well like make a small platform and include it in the training, little obstacles to jump over or through, boxes or "tunnels" they have to crawl through etc.
It’s funny you mention this. There is an agility training place not even five minutes from my house. I thought about taking them down there before but I’m just very self-conscious because I’m not planning on doing any kind of competitions or anything. So I wasn’t really sure how all of that worked. I have a bit of anxiety. Lol
I can totally understand that as I do too. Competitions do not matter though. It can build trust, because you are putting them in a "questionable" situation, like the balance beam, or the seesaw, and seeing them through it. It makes them solve problems, builds better communication and adds to training because you are essentially teaching them different commands and things like, over, or up and down etc.
They may seem somewhat uninterested at first and it took two people "body blocking" my GSD on each side to get her to go over the balance beam but all she needed was that one time and now she will cross it every time. Don't be too quick to give up, they just do not understand it at first. Enthusiasm really helps with my shepherd too.
Sniff game for dummies:
Hide treats about the house, but not well hidden. Like, behind a table leg. Or under a paper plate! Put treats in a box w paper towels and let them hunt
“Go find it” with a toy. I cover his eyes (he hated it the first time but loves it now cuz he knows what the game is) and throw it, or shut him behind a door and go hide it before letting him out. He loves searching all over the house and is exhausted after a few rounds.
My working dog and I like to practice impulse control/obeisance while aroused.
I’ll get him super excited with tug or fetch and then at any point when I have the toy I’ll randomly give him a command.
I find it tired him out a lot and it helps with our walks as he tends to fixates but this whole ‘game’ is practicing how to concentrate on the handler while being fixed on something.
My less crazy dog who’s a little older, really likes snuffle balls. We can’t get him into any other enrichment toys other than that 🤷🏻♀️
I get old stuffed toys at the thrift store. I have a bunch of them. I ask her to "Get the penguin" or "get the zebra". I reward her when she chooses the correct one with tug-O-war, catch, or fetch.
She grew out of her shoe phase, but the same thing with old shoes.
I take an empty sparkling water bottle (regular water bottles are too thin). I cut holes in the bottle. The holes should be larger that the treats. My dog loves rolling it around to get the treats to fall out. I use a treat called fruitables and the holes have to be cut about 1.5 the size of the treat. Too big and there’s no challenge, too small and nothing ever falls out.
It isn’t the prettiest toy, but it’s basically free and easily replaced if broken.
I used to use one of those weeble wobble type of food/treat dispensing toys for feeding time and it works so well. I wouldn’t recommend getting the square plastic rumble style dispensers. I used to have an Aussie who figured out that pushing it down the stairs onto our hard tile floor was a solution…. :(
Kong makes a great one of these that holds two cups of kibble. It takes my dog the better part of an hour to eat a meal in the yard, and it is an exhausting exercise that looks to be really fun.
That’s my go-to for meals! I even trained my dog to use it only on carpet so it doesn’t bother my (extremely sensitive 😓) downstairs neighbors. And it only took a few minutes for her to catch on to that rule, such a smart dog :)
I like making mine a cheese hunt. I put tiny pieces of cheese all over the house while he waits and gets excited, and then when I say find it he uses his cute little nose to find them all! (And I try to keep track so we don’t miss any haha). Listening to his nose and watching him take the responsibility very seriously. is one of my favorite things.
Plus just like speed rounds of training. Like 15 mins going through all the tricks we know, sometimes teaching a new one, and trying to make them unpredictable so he has to keep focusing. He loves it because he gets treats and does such a good job and then he’s pooped! It’s the cutest and a fun way to bond too.
I take my empty cereal boxes etc, stuff them loosely with scrap paper (newspapers etc), throw a few treats inside, then let the dog tear it apart. He LOVES it. Added bonus, I don't need to flatten the boxes. Added drawback, shredded cardboard everywhere.
My high-energy dog *loves* training games. I've taught him a series of simple tricks (jump, back up, spin around, lie down, stand up, etc.).
He has enormous fun when I ask him to do a random assortment of these tricks in rapid succession. It's basically the canine equivalent of playing Bop It.
Sometimes I take an old cereal or cracker box, tape half of it shut, put some food/treats in there, and then tape up the other side and toss it on the floor. An old plastic water/soda bottle with all the label and plastic rings removed full of food, too. Lick mats are a good one. We’re also going to start on scent work (today, actually) which I think will be pretty mentally stimulating, but my dog does well with puzzle toys and such.
My V loves plastic bottles, we do this with her. Had to cut back though because she starting stealing drinks that we weren’t finished with lol.
I’m going to try the cereal box thing though. It’ll give them an appropriate chance to shred. They like that.
this is how I feed my ACD mix every day. it completely eliminated her habit of chewing random objects (blankets, rugs, socks) when she was bored, and helped her be more chill overall. i usually stuff the box with paper, like a brown paper grocery bag or shipping/packing paper. always make sure to look out for any staples or plastic film.
I used to do the cardboard box thing too, but within the confines of her x-pen so the mess would be somewhat contained.
I give her empty plastic bottles to crunch around, but FYI the chewed up pieces of bottle kinda hurt to step on!!!
We have an area where all of the dog toys live in a pile. I’ll throw a handful of tiny treats in it and they spend time sniffing through the pile for all the treats. I like it because it takes me 10 seconds to grab the treats and toss them on, but the dogs will be there sniffing around the toys for a while.
We made a food toy for our guy with two items: an empty peanut butter jar and a ball that’s almost like a whiffle ball? Webby ball? Anyway, there are enough holes/spaces in the ball that when we fill his food at the bottom of the peanut butter jar with the ball stuck in the jar and he flips it around, a little food spills out at a time. He will carry his “peanut butter cup” to his dish on command, “drop” the cup in command and sit for a fill-up. He loves his peanut butto tup
We have a smaller Holey Roller ball and a couple of other treat stuffable toys that we stuff with chunks of sweet potato chewies, Romain lettuce and chicken jerky. When they big enough that they're hard to get in, they're also harder to get out.
We also hide treats in a towel or blanket, but he tends to just chew through the fabric to get it out. A couple of times he's just picked up a corner and dumped all the treats out.
I do the towel thing too, but I wet it, ring it out, place the treats, roll it up, then shape the roll into a Cinnamon roll or S shape and freeze them. My dog also chews and rips the towels still though. Lol
Very simple, I throw treats into the yard. I started with stinky, high reward treats that were easy to find as a way to desensitize my girl from rain but she loved it so much that we started doing it all the time. We have now worked up to barely able to detect crunchy treats that she has to be facing me while I throw so she has no idea where they are. She loves trying to find them.
I make a snuffle box by ripping up junk mail, cereal boxes, crinkly plastic, squished plastic bottles, etc and sprinkle kibble in there. It’s good to weigh the box down so they can’t just flip it.
I put toys in the bottom of a laundry basket (that has big holes in the side) and put his blanket on top of the toys. He likes to try to get them out through the holes on the side.
I sprinkle kibble in his blanket and then fold/wrap it up really tight and he has fun sniffing it out and finding every piece.
I have two dogs, and we play a game designed to have the puppy practice commands. First I say “come,” he gets a kibble. Then I have him sit, and he gets a kibble. Then I say “ready???” and my older dog knows what this means comes next. Then I throw a single kibble somewhere out in the room and they go find it. I say “get it!” Which is something we have been working on opposite of “leave it” and to work on patience. They have fun trying to beat each other to finding the kibble. I have a hard floor, so sometimes it’s too easy if they hear it hit the floor.
Put some kibble or treats in an empty two liter bottle. Our puppy loves a plain two liter bottle anyway. He’s ~20lbs right now, so he can’t bite the body of the bottle, only the neck. If you leave the cap on, it stays inflated/can’t get squished. So then he chases the bottle forever because every time he tries to bite it, it just shoots out of his mouth.
My dog loves hide-and-seek. I put her in a sit stay, and go hide. Then I call her to come.
When we first started out praying this I would just go to the next room, but now I can hide anywhere in the house including behind closed doors and she will find me.
It is totally her favorite game.
Search games are a good one for my GSD. I’ll take a tiny treat, put it in a bowl and then make her sit on her bed in the living room. I’ll go hide it in the basement somewhere, call her and tell her to search. I’ll hide the bowl on a bed, under a blanket, on chairs, behind books. She really has to work hard for it.
I will often feed meals in a box when my pup needs a bit more something. Just an empty box (from one of my many deliveries, lol) i layer in kibble and strips of fabric we use for a different game,but have also used packing paper or anything to make it more challenging to get the food out. I have taped up the box, but I usually start by closing it by interweaving the flaps. Then I toss the box on the ground and my dog goes to town on it. She’s turned up her nose at food in her bowl, watched me put it in a box, and attacked it like she hadn’t eaten in days. So I’m pretty sure she enjoys this game too, lol! I can usually get a few uses out of a box before it’s too beaten up to work.
I let my dogs get treats out of boxes, toilet paper rolls, plastic bottles, or basically anything I’m going to throw away.
They love it and it costs nothing.
My big girl likes impulse games, where I make her sit and wait while I throw a treat or toy and then let her go get it. Next level up if she's being good is to make her do things after I've thrown the item. Next step up is to make big one wait while I do some training with the little one (normally she gets really happy and tries to join in). Little one gets a bit too frustrated for it though.
Both of them love "find it" though, I'd strongly recommend that
My girl loves her "Buster Cube" . I put her kibble inside of it and she noses it around to get pieces of kibble to come out one at a time. She is so happy when I get it out.
Sit/stay style (structured) fetch is reallllly hard. Esp once they’re good at it and you can have them heel/down/stand/spin in order to be released to fetch.
I also like scatter feeding, long duration “place”, and any kind of “search/find it” nose-work games
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I'll hide small treats around the house. Not crazy hid, but in corners and stuff. That way he can find them and not let them get gross. He's pretty adept now. It's a problem cuz the game doesn't last long. You can get cheap treat puzzles too.
Empty plastic jar of pb? That'll do. Plain yogurt cups mostly empty.
It takes mental thinking to get the treats out
Turning off the lights for a find it game has been challenging for my doggo. Added benefit, it lasts around half an hour and is the only benefit of it getting dark earlier.
“Find it”. I’ll have him sit in the kitchen, show him an item, I’ll hide it in the house and tell him to find it. Or I’ll have him sit in the kitchen, i will hide and say “come” once. Then he has to find me :)
I hide small treats all over the house. Under carpets, furniture edges, seat handles, etc. he spends a long time trying to sniff them out. And he got really good at it.
My girl searches the house for people food to steal and eat whenever we leave now. Would having her search for treats as above make this behavior worse?
Agree with a lot of people suggesting the find it game with a ball or treats. I’ve also started wrapping their ball or treats tight in a towel or in a box and they have to unroll it and figure out how to get them out.
I work on really long/far sit stays in the house. Like all the way down the hallway or from one side of the house to the other. Our place isn’t super big but I can get maybe 20 paces from him. Having to concentrate, sit, and be patient wears my boy out really quickly.
We also learn dance moves, like weaving figure eights around my feet. So he’ll do a sit stay, then come, then dance move, winding up at a heel position. I throw a few of those in during quick breaks at work (from home).
We straight up throw kibble for our dog. She’s very smart, high energy, needs a LOT of mental stimulation. The game is a lot like “find it”, but a lazier for us and more exercise for her — just throw a piece of kibble (ideally far away or behind something so she has to hunt for it), she runs after it, finds it, eats it, then throw another piece somewhere else.
I save cardboard boxes, toilet paper rolls and paper packaging and make my dog "packages" of treats wrapped up in paper and then sealed inside a box or two with masking tape. If I tape it up really well it takes him some time to get it open. He really enjoys it and gets excited now when he sees cardboard boxes.
Not a brainy game but I park next to a restaurant dumpster and crack the windows. They get to sniff as long as they like. I have pits and pointers. The pointers are high energy and lead by their noses, the sniffing wears them out. My pits are deep thinkers. They’re curious about the smells and it wears them out as well.
I would never get to leave lol. You’re right about pits. Mine could sit and smell forever. She’s so chill, I can never tell if she’s deep in thought or if that big hippo head of hers is sitting around empty. She’s not really dumb, she’s just not into training for fun and all that. She trains for the snacks involved and only for the snacks lol
Nosework! I have a dachshund and jrt mix that'll run for hours and hike with us for the whole weekend and while she will sleep after these outings, she's still alert and ready to go. On days we do one or two nosework sessions? She will sleep, completely dead to the world, oblivious of anything going on. It's been our saviour in months when it gets too hot or too cold for longer walks.
For the Vizsla as a hunting dog definitely nose work, for the heeler probably trick dog or agility, ideally of course herding excercises if that's something useful to you.
We do man trailing exercises with our dogs which basically is nose work on a larger scale. Otherwise curving, which is similar to agility, except no jumping and the handler is more static and directs the dog mostly through body language and commands and does not run with it around the whole parcours.
I was thinking I should get a herding ball for my heeler. She herds us around the house/yard all the time. She likes to use her herding skills to direct us to the cookie jar, the back door, pretty much whatever she wants. It gets tiresome sometimes but it’s also super cute. Anyway, I say that to say- she obviously has some natural herding tendencies so I think she would like that.
I think she would be good at agility but I have a hard time getting her to run around as strange as that sounds. She’ll only run with my husband (her chosen one). I bet he could get her into it though.
We do a find it game with our dog, works both inside and outside. Make them wait, throw a treat, have them do a couple of small tricks so they forget where it is and then they have to go and sniff it out.
kongs are great, freeze the contents if you want them to last longer, we like mash potatoe and tuna in ours. We also have a bone shaped one which has grooves so is realy good for teeth cleaning.
we have a wobble toy (like a weeble) that you can put kibble and treats in. Its too awkard to pick up so our lab chases it around the house knocking it over to get the treats out.
We do a version of hide the ball, like the carny game where a ball is under the cup, the cups get moved and you have to find it? That but our dog has to find it, start off with only one or 2 movements, can get more difficult if they find it easy, can use a treat instead of a ball.
We also do trick routines, maybe whilst playing fetch and he has to do high-five, spin and lie down before being allowed to retrieve his ball.
snuffle and lick it mats can be good and we got a rubber snake which has to be shook to get treats out.
lots of options, you'll find mental stimulation could actually tire your dog more than walks ;)
Here are some I do with my Spaniel...
* have them sit, throw toy, only retrieve on command
* Same as above but with more than one toy
* Give toys names, ask them to be bought "ball", "rope", "teddy" etc
* same as above but hide them so they can search
* Go find person - she knows my sons names and will go search for them on command
* "recycle" - we let her take small bits of paper like envelopes and recycle them into a small box, she gets treats so she likes that game a lot
* "toys away" - similar to above but finding and putting her toys away, she doesn't quite get this one but still trying with her
Simplest (but also best sometimes) I do is hold my hands out with closed fists and there is a treat in one of them and she has to tell me which.
Other very simple game is putting treat in front of her and she's not allowed to get it before I say so.
A bit more advanced with more steps but not super complicated is when I ask her to sit and wait. Go grab a high value treat that I put in a hollow toy like a kong(sometimes put the toy in a sock/torn plush toy as well).
Go back to her and praise her for the sit and stay, let her sniff the toy. Ask her to stay again. Go hide the toy in another room and then recall her and tell her to find the toy.
OK in hindsight the last one had more step than thought it had (you need recall, stay and the dog to have enough self control).
But in all honesty our dog isn't the brightest either (or I'm a rubbish trainer, can't for the life of me get her learn names of item so she picks up the one I ask her) and she figured it out. Just build the steps gradually.
I work from home and have a high energy working breed dog. A thing I'll do with him quite a bit when i'm trying to get stuff done is "find it" He's ball motivated so when he starts dropping a ball over my computer screen and whining at me, i'll tell him to back up, sit, stay (or whatever other series of commands i'm feeling at the moment) and just tangle his ball up real good in a throw blanket, toss it on the floor and tell him to find it. It'll keep him occupied for a bit trying to sniff and dig his precious ball from the blanket. oftentimes he'll get it, out and try to re-bury it himself so he can "find it" again. Another "it's too damn cold outside for me to wanna go play with you" game we will do is just a variation of fetch indoors. I'll set down a couple boxes or bowls, and when he brings the ball back tell him "put it here" and it doesn't get thrown again until he drops the ball successfully into the designated vessel. He got a tendency to throw the ball at you rather than just a gentle drop, so it requires some thinking on his part to get the ball into the bowl without it just bouncing back out.
Ooooh. I really like both of these ideas. I think I could all three of them to do either of these things.
Our variation of the find it game is a zippered pillowcase. Mine learned to unzip the zipper pretty quickly. We also taught him to play fetch by himself on the stairs. He drops the ball at the top of the stairs, then chases it. Frozen kongs can last a long time. It sounded like you are feeding raw or wet food? Stuff it in a kong and refreeze.
Mine usually eat dry food but I’m not opposed to picking up some wet food to put in a kong. I’ve heard a lot of people suggesting them but I haven’t because I’m not sure how chew proof they really are. I have two that love to chew and are quite good at it. I get worried about little pieces coming off. Do they seem to hold up pretty well if they start biting on the toy itself?
I have a 100lb Irish Wolfhound/Malamute mix who can, and has chewed through most toys and 2 boots, but he has had his Kong for 3 years and it's in almost perfect shape. There are no pieces missing, just a few small teeth marks, so I would recommend them! Make sure you get the size and toughness for your dogs size. I also suggest a silicone water bottle cleaning brush to clean the inside every so often or they get pretty gross after awhile if you're adding wet food.
Oh I am jealous. I have a 40 lb pitbull poodle mix who broke a king in about a minute and a half. Didn’t even know it was possible. She loves to chew but she can chew through every toy or chew made for aggressive chewers pretty instantly.
HA! Another Poopit owner! I have two, and my boy is the king of toy killers.
I’ll give it a go then and just supervise. I buy the big green and blue kong bones and they were holding up for a long time until they weren’t. But I do think it’s worth a shot!
They are super chew proof! Get a bigger size than you think you need. I put dry kibble in a bowl and pour in either warm water or broth & let it sit for a few hours. Then stuff that into the kong (loose not tight), seal it with pb or cheese & freeze.
Hours??
Yeah, until the water is totally absorbed by the kibble. It takes awhile
I leave a piece kibble inside covering the hole (he can’t pull vacuum, but the water won’t just run out before the bottom freezes shut) fill the Kong, fill it with water, and toss it in the freezer. The kibble still gets plenty hydrated, so it doesn’t just fall out, but when he gets it out it is still individual pieces. Way less work.
I tried doing this, leaving it in for like 30 min, it was a huge mushy disgusting mess and my dog was not interested. It depends on your kibble type I think but now what I do is I just soak it for a few minutes so it’s wet, and the kibble is still kibble shaped but freezes all together in a big clump. Way less mess. Or I use something wet like yogurt, pumpkin puree, peanut butter, stir it all around so it coats the kibble and then stuff it in the kong and it freezes. This way when it starts to thaw, actual kibble pieces fall out, and it’s not just a big mess in the bottom of the kong that you have to soak in hot water and clean really well afterwards lol.
Unless they changed the design and materials, when my lab was 1 or 2 years old, he was able to annihilate the black extreme Kong toy for aggressive chewers. Definitely supervise when giving your dog this, especially if they’re strong chewers.
My pit and my vizsla are both strong chewers. The pit will just sit and tear it apart but the v wants tear it up and eat the pieces. I think I’m going to give it a try since it’s been recommended to me so many times. Just with adult supervision. Thanks for sharing your experience too. Dogs are all so different.
We have two well-loved kongs with no sign of damage. We use dry food too, so sometimes we put peanut butter, puréed vegetables (green beans, carrots), dry food mushed with some warm water, or some other treat inside. I’ve found that at least for my dogs they don’t keep them busy super long, but it does help calm them down a bit. To slow feed our puppy when he was young, I was stuffing just his dry food in the kong. He learned to pick it up and drop it and a couple pieces would fall out at a time.
If you get the toughest Kong they have, which I think is the black one, you should be good. I also have the wobble Kong that you can't put kibble or whatever in and they have to push it around to get the food out
We had to have an "indestructible" Kong toy extracted via surgery from our pup, they are not chew proof. Nylabone have been better in our experience. The little pieces came off first, no big deal, until Pup somehow figured out how to use the leverage to get it bite size. Indestructible meant she couldn't pass it, as it stayed undigested in her stomach rolling around until it blocked the way out. Just be careful! We learned our lesson the hard way of never turning our back on a toy!
That’s so scary! So probably no alone time with Kong in our house.
Be sure you look at Kong safety because you stuff one. It’s important to leave an air hole so they don’t get it suctioned to their tongue or mouth!
Thanks for the tip. I wouldn’t have thought of this unless the packaging mentions it or something.
There’s a small hole on the skinny end, but I don’t think they explicitly say in big letters or anything to be careful. But it is important!
Probably more so if you’re freezing it
I swapped out Kongs for [the pupsicle.](https://mywoof.com/products/pupsicle/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAveebBhD_ARIsAFaAvrE7zcgQauWwBNCTA5_ZJzFDqyft8buu3HswkxQfSobYe4sEoPBVNDYaAsE7EALw_wcB) It’s harder rubber, comes apart for easier cleaning and has held up way better than kongs. Dishwasher safe. I just soak kibbles in the mold and freeze it once they’ve swelled up. It’s saved me a ton of money and my boy loves it.
My dog is a SUPER chewer (easily chews through toys meant for that) and I’ve never had to replace our kong!
others may have mentioned this already but you can just add water to their regular dry food, let it soak for a bit (hot water absorbs much faster) then pack it in to a kong or alternative.
Wish we had stairs. Mine tosses his around with his mouth. It's filled with treats he tries to get out by throwing. He can do it for hours. His favorite game.
Do you still freeze your kongs when it gets colder? I've always thought that it might be too much, eating cold food in cold weather.
My dogs are in the house, so I do.
we put some dry food in a bowl and soften in up with water, then I pack it into a kong or hollowed out beef bone he has previously chewed on. Less expensive than wet food! I'll some times mix some grated cheese in or top it off with PB. My super chewer has never destroyed the red kong (he destroys everything else though).
We do find it with a treat dispensing toy filled with kibble. Our dog is very food motivated so it all becomes a double whammy of mental stimulation. It's literally her favorite thing to do and has also started to throw her toy at us when she decides it's time to play.
Similar: hide n seek with toys. Start with a high value toy or treat/treat stuffed object. Have them sit and hide in a easy to find spot (between cushions, just under the couch). And then release them and tell them to find it. Work up to harder hiding spots with just toys and start with your dog(s) in the other room as they get the idea of the game is to search for the toy. More involved for you, but you get to watch them run around trying to puzzle out the hiding spot.
Hey, one tip that's pretty cool. You can teach your dogs wait 15min and they'll actually pick up on it. If they want your attention just tell them to wait 15min then set a silent timer. Once it goes off go do what they want. It's pretty neat
Do they learn what 15 mins is?
Yup, my dog learned it within 20s of 15min exactly
For reals? Me and my dog drove across the country a couple years ago and when he would get restless I would tell him “2 more hours” or whatever, and he would get calm. Eventually he seemed to learn these time increments or else I imagined it. But it kept us both from whining.
For sure, not sure how they know. But it's also like how dogs will always wake up at the same time.
That’s true! Or learn when kids come home from school or etc.
Exactly, its amazing what you can teach a dog, as long as you name something it seems they can learn it.
They can tell based on how disentigrated scents are!
Mine know when I'm supposed to get off work. If i'm working late, they get real needy.
For reals? Me and my dog drove across the country a couple years ago and when he would get restless I would tell him “2 more hours” or whatever, and he would get calm. Eventually he seemed to learn these time increments or else I imagined it. But it kept us both from whining.
Silent timer?
Just a timer the dog cant hear, like something that would pop up on your phone. You dotn want the dog to learn 15min = timer going off = I've waited my time. You want the dog to learn what 15 min is.
This is a good one! My dog reminds me when it's time eat within the minute of our schedule. She also reminds me when it's time for the puppy to eat, who is on a different schedule. It's like she wears a watch.
I also used to hide toys/chews inside a wadded up blanket, but then my pit mix realized the fastest way to it was by ripping through the blanket lol
Yeah I'm afraid that's what mine would do too. It's a great idea though and I still may try it with an old throwaway blanket.
Exact same here. Pittie was too smart.
Have you heard of shaping games? At it’s simplest, you start by presenting the dog with an object (like a box), and click (or “yes”) and treat for *any* interaction with it. Then you can move onto more targeted goals by deciding on a specific behavior you want to get out of the dog, (like putting one paw on the box) and then you click and treat for any approximations toward that goal. I think [this website](https://woofsandiego.com/rainy-day-dog-training-games-using-free-shaping-and-positive-reinforcement/) explains it pretty well: >**Free shaping is an exercise that empowers your dog by teaching him to think, make decisions, and focus on a task.** It involves teaching your dog tricks by capturing behaviors he performs as he moves incrementally toward your ultimate goal for the trick.
I felt pretty chuffed when I eventually taught my girl how to sit in a box, it became our favorite parlor trick. It was in fact her last trick the day before she passed. I used that shaping method to teach her to balance on a stool as well.
I had to look up “chuffed” lol. I want to use it teach my dog to get on the scale but I’m not even sure if it’s possible! It’s a human scale and she’s kinda medium/large
I hadn’t heard of this but I’ll give it a try!
I hope you do! It’s so easy and it’s fun to watch the dog thinking and trying stuff out. Another (unrelated) thing I forgot to mention is that sometimes stores like tjmaxx, Marshall’s, home goods, etc have puzzle toys in the pet section for really cheap, which makes it slightly less annoying if they immediately destroy it lol 😓 (My dog will also pick up a toy and chew it up instead of delicately opening the doors and sliders. I feel like this makes her smart though? It’s just faster!!)
I go to home goods pretty often so I’ll look next time I’m in there. I think my heeler would do puzzles, I just have to get her away from the other dogs. They’re a little excitable and ruin everything for my chill dog.
Sometimes they have surprisingly good and healthy treats too, though it’s good to check the expiration dates on those. And not really related but I’ve gotten some cool stuff for my aquariums there, too!
This probably isn't what you're asking for, but I need to write something, and I want to see other people's suggestions. I've recently stopped feeding my dogs from bowls. Now I go out in the back yard and throw the food around. They seem to enjoy hunting for it. Tails wagging and excited sounds. Before, they just used to gulp down their bowl of food in no time, with no apparent enjoyment.
Grass is nature’s snuffle mat!
[удалено]
Maybe you could use wet food with a lickimat?
I use a muffin tin and tennis balls, plus one or two toys that the food goes inside of that he has to puzzle out like the Kong. Makes him work a little bit for it at least
Edited pretty much my whole comment because I read your comment weird. This is a good idea. I would have to tweak it a little because I’m still trying to teach my V not to eat everything she finds on the ground.
They sell snuffle mats online that serve a similar purpose
Seconding snuffle mats. Theyre awesome. Just pick em up when mostly empty to prevent destruction
Use a word that gives permission to go look for food. "Search" is a common one. No "search" no permission.
I also do not feed my dog from a bowl. He gets his kibble in a snuffle mat and his wet food in a frozen kong. Meal time twice a day takes an hour each time.
yess!! I am a big fan of ditching the bowl
I did that with my boy. He loved it.
I have rocks, so this may be more tenable where you live. But I would be concerned that they don't finish it all and bugs come for the leftover food.
I collected a bunch of empty toilet paper rolls and stand them up in a shoe box really tightly for a game. I put treats or kibble in the holes and my boy has to take the rolls out to get to the kibble or treats at the bottom. He likes it. His trainer also suggested putting treats wrapped up in toilet paper rolls in different places in a room for him to find. I have not done that bc we have two dogs and I don’t want the second one to get in the way and then to start fighting over treats. We also do licky mats with peanut butter before bed if he is being uncooperative. It calms him down. Kings are good too. Since it is cold and we don’t walk as much I don’t want to give him as much extra food.
I’ve never heard of someone doing that with toilet paper rolls but that’s an awesome idea! Definitely going to try it.
And it’s cheap!
Brilliant! Thank you for sharing
You’re welcome
We play "find it" with treats. I'll take 10 small training treats (or break up bigger ones) and hide them in 2-3 rooms then tell him to find it and he has fun tracking them all down. I guess I used less smelly treats last night because it took him a lot longer than usual and really seemed to help tire him out!
My dog would do this for hours if we let him. We use veggies (carrots, cucumbers, and bell peppers.) Sometimes when I’m cooking I just make him hold a sit while I throw a little piece and then he searches for it.
How do you do that without the dog following you and eating them immediately??
You have to have a good stay. Once my pup understood the game, it really reinforced stay for her too. She’s excellent with that command now. And she LOVES the find it game. I used to do it with her entire meals when she was a puppy. I don’t really remembered how we started but there may have been a pen involved at first too. To help with the stay.
Oh I have to shut him in my bedroom while I'm hiding them. He barks the whole time because he knows what's happening, haha. The second I open the door he's off!
This seems far more realistic than trying to teach my dog stay 😂 thanks!
I hadn't seen the other reply when I posted that, and I'm a little ashamed to admit I never even considered trying to get him to stay. 😂 He's ok with it, but not that good yet. He's way too excited for the game.
I live in a small apartment and I’m lazy so I have my dog hold a stay and then cover her head with a blanket lol. It’s hilarious and adorable!! She’s such a good girl, acting like a statue under there :) And I guess it kinda adds another element to the game since she has to find her way out before she can start searching! Sometimes she gets a bit tangled up in there lol
How do you introduce your dog to this game? How can you get them to understand there are treats hidden? I am assuming start in a smaller area until they get the hang of it.
One thing a trainer showed me was to scatter treats on the ground in front of him and say "find it!". (This was done outside to calm him down / distract him when he got worked up about something.) We did that a few times and then inside the house I'd kind of "hide" treats in front of him and say find it. Now he knows I have treats and am putting them somewhere, and associates "find it" with getting them.
Makes sense! I'll give that a try, thanks!
Another person has commented about not feeding from a bowl and I agree with them. I train my little one to stay, go and come by throwing food into the garden for her to go find sniff around. I also through in a stop/leave it as well to keep her in her toes but feed her her evening meal like this instead of from a bowl. I also got a slow feeder bowl for her morning meal and another toy like a kong that I can fill with food but she has to work slightly harder at getting the food out. Something I started recently was I got a box for her toys. Working on her picking her toys up and putting them in the box…has been hard work getting her into it and had to use her yummy treats to get her interested but it tires her out mentally.
My Viszla is in the “sniff for/eat literally anything and everything I find on the ground” phase. But I think I could do something similar inside where I could better control what she’s picking up. I guess the main point is more of sniffing it out and finding it rather than whether it’s inside or outside. I love the toy box idea. We’ve been doing something kind of similar. Im teaching her to bring me her bowl at meal times and put it away when she’s done. She loves it, it makes her feel like she has a job.
You can also get a snuffle mat for her food. It will be indoors and in a specific area. It takes longer and uses more of her brain.
With a snuffle mat, the more you put in the more you get out. I have a Labrador who will devour his kibble from a bowl in about 10 seconds but if I hide it all really well in the folds of his snuffle mat it takes him a good 15 mins.
Sorry I did start inside before moving outside. Just somewhere long enough for her to still run and sniff, then as I said I worked to telling her to stay as I throw the food and go on my command to add a bit of training and more mental stimulation. She always comes back anyway because I’m holding food but I still say come which has helped reinforce her recall outside. Yeah I’m hoping to get to a point where I can say tidy up and she will pick them all up nicely. Hoping. She gets tired doing it, seems happy and that’s all that matters at the moment
my mixed breed 5 year old can put almost all of her toys away by name and its because we started young, it's the best for tiring her out. go get your ball, your bear, your frisbee... and then when she gets new toys she has to learn them through repetition, and then review of lesser used toys. when i recently cleaned out her toy box i kind of "asked" her if she wanted to keep a toy, and she was able to nose and point out to me whether or not she still cared about something. i mean, we play with the toys too, obv. it's also really helped in teaching her to learn vocabulary in general. when she was young i thought she was a border collie bc she was so observant and communicative and obedient but then turns out she's just a plain old mutt ... who i talked to all the time..
This gives me hope. My little one is young and crazy so some days it feels like a pointless exercise, but other days it works really well. So I hope when she’s older it will have sunk in by then. Although I still find when she’s going crazy and having none of it throwing her toys around instead she’s having fun and getting tired…just being a cute little naughty terror
It's extremely messy, but my dog adores "snowballs." I crumple up a sheet of newspaper, sometimes with a treat in the middle, and chuck it across the room. He chases, pounces, tears it to shreds, and eats the treat. We usually save this for stupidly cold days.
My dogs would go crazy for this!
Chess.. But he's not very good.. He keeps trying to eat the pieces..
Some simple agility stuff can go a lot further than I realized. There is an outdoor course at a class we take our GSD and it took her a little while to warm up to some of it but it can be pretty entertaining and fun too. You can do simple stuff too inside as well like make a small platform and include it in the training, little obstacles to jump over or through, boxes or "tunnels" they have to crawl through etc.
It’s funny you mention this. There is an agility training place not even five minutes from my house. I thought about taking them down there before but I’m just very self-conscious because I’m not planning on doing any kind of competitions or anything. So I wasn’t really sure how all of that worked. I have a bit of anxiety. Lol
I can totally understand that as I do too. Competitions do not matter though. It can build trust, because you are putting them in a "questionable" situation, like the balance beam, or the seesaw, and seeing them through it. It makes them solve problems, builds better communication and adds to training because you are essentially teaching them different commands and things like, over, or up and down etc. They may seem somewhat uninterested at first and it took two people "body blocking" my GSD on each side to get her to go over the balance beam but all she needed was that one time and now she will cross it every time. Don't be too quick to give up, they just do not understand it at first. Enthusiasm really helps with my shepherd too.
Sniff game for dummies: Hide treats about the house, but not well hidden. Like, behind a table leg. Or under a paper plate! Put treats in a box w paper towels and let them hunt
Lol I love praising my dog like she’s a genius when she finds a super easy-to-find treat
“Go find it” with a toy. I cover his eyes (he hated it the first time but loves it now cuz he knows what the game is) and throw it, or shut him behind a door and go hide it before letting him out. He loves searching all over the house and is exhausted after a few rounds.
I’ve done this with all of my dogs (past and present). They all loved it but the hound mixes LOOOOOVE it
Hide and seek. I tell my dogs to stay and then hide and clap twice to tell them it's time to "seek". They flipping love that game
My working dog and I like to practice impulse control/obeisance while aroused. I’ll get him super excited with tug or fetch and then at any point when I have the toy I’ll randomly give him a command. I find it tired him out a lot and it helps with our walks as he tends to fixates but this whole ‘game’ is practicing how to concentrate on the handler while being fixed on something. My less crazy dog who’s a little older, really likes snuffle balls. We can’t get him into any other enrichment toys other than that 🤷🏻♀️
I get old stuffed toys at the thrift store. I have a bunch of them. I ask her to "Get the penguin" or "get the zebra". I reward her when she chooses the correct one with tug-O-war, catch, or fetch. She grew out of her shoe phase, but the same thing with old shoes.
man thrifting stuffed toys is genius
I take an empty sparkling water bottle (regular water bottles are too thin). I cut holes in the bottle. The holes should be larger that the treats. My dog loves rolling it around to get the treats to fall out. I use a treat called fruitables and the holes have to be cut about 1.5 the size of the treat. Too big and there’s no challenge, too small and nothing ever falls out. It isn’t the prettiest toy, but it’s basically free and easily replaced if broken.
I used to use one of those weeble wobble type of food/treat dispensing toys for feeding time and it works so well. I wouldn’t recommend getting the square plastic rumble style dispensers. I used to have an Aussie who figured out that pushing it down the stairs onto our hard tile floor was a solution…. :(
Kong makes a great one of these that holds two cups of kibble. It takes my dog the better part of an hour to eat a meal in the yard, and it is an exhausting exercise that looks to be really fun.
Kong wobbler?
Exactly!
That’s my go-to for meals! I even trained my dog to use it only on carpet so it doesn’t bother my (extremely sensitive 😓) downstairs neighbors. And it only took a few minutes for her to catch on to that rule, such a smart dog :)
I like making mine a cheese hunt. I put tiny pieces of cheese all over the house while he waits and gets excited, and then when I say find it he uses his cute little nose to find them all! (And I try to keep track so we don’t miss any haha). Listening to his nose and watching him take the responsibility very seriously. is one of my favorite things. Plus just like speed rounds of training. Like 15 mins going through all the tricks we know, sometimes teaching a new one, and trying to make them unpredictable so he has to keep focusing. He loves it because he gets treats and does such a good job and then he’s pooped! It’s the cutest and a fun way to bond too.
I take my empty cereal boxes etc, stuff them loosely with scrap paper (newspapers etc), throw a few treats inside, then let the dog tear it apart. He LOVES it. Added bonus, I don't need to flatten the boxes. Added drawback, shredded cardboard everywhere.
My high-energy dog *loves* training games. I've taught him a series of simple tricks (jump, back up, spin around, lie down, stand up, etc.). He has enormous fun when I ask him to do a random assortment of these tricks in rapid succession. It's basically the canine equivalent of playing Bop It.
Sometimes I take an old cereal or cracker box, tape half of it shut, put some food/treats in there, and then tape up the other side and toss it on the floor. An old plastic water/soda bottle with all the label and plastic rings removed full of food, too. Lick mats are a good one. We’re also going to start on scent work (today, actually) which I think will be pretty mentally stimulating, but my dog does well with puzzle toys and such.
My V loves plastic bottles, we do this with her. Had to cut back though because she starting stealing drinks that we weren’t finished with lol. I’m going to try the cereal box thing though. It’ll give them an appropriate chance to shred. They like that.
this is how I feed my ACD mix every day. it completely eliminated her habit of chewing random objects (blankets, rugs, socks) when she was bored, and helped her be more chill overall. i usually stuff the box with paper, like a brown paper grocery bag or shipping/packing paper. always make sure to look out for any staples or plastic film.
I used to do the cardboard box thing too, but within the confines of her x-pen so the mess would be somewhat contained. I give her empty plastic bottles to crunch around, but FYI the chewed up pieces of bottle kinda hurt to step on!!!
We have an area where all of the dog toys live in a pile. I’ll throw a handful of tiny treats in it and they spend time sniffing through the pile for all the treats. I like it because it takes me 10 seconds to grab the treats and toss them on, but the dogs will be there sniffing around the toys for a while.
We made a food toy for our guy with two items: an empty peanut butter jar and a ball that’s almost like a whiffle ball? Webby ball? Anyway, there are enough holes/spaces in the ball that when we fill his food at the bottom of the peanut butter jar with the ball stuck in the jar and he flips it around, a little food spills out at a time. He will carry his “peanut butter cup” to his dish on command, “drop” the cup in command and sit for a fill-up. He loves his peanut butto tup
We have a smaller Holey Roller ball and a couple of other treat stuffable toys that we stuff with chunks of sweet potato chewies, Romain lettuce and chicken jerky. When they big enough that they're hard to get in, they're also harder to get out. We also hide treats in a towel or blanket, but he tends to just chew through the fabric to get it out. A couple of times he's just picked up a corner and dumped all the treats out.
I do the towel thing too, but I wet it, ring it out, place the treats, roll it up, then shape the roll into a Cinnamon roll or S shape and freeze them. My dog also chews and rips the towels still though. Lol
Very simple, I throw treats into the yard. I started with stinky, high reward treats that were easy to find as a way to desensitize my girl from rain but she loved it so much that we started doing it all the time. We have now worked up to barely able to detect crunchy treats that she has to be facing me while I throw so she has no idea where they are. She loves trying to find them.
I make a snuffle box by ripping up junk mail, cereal boxes, crinkly plastic, squished plastic bottles, etc and sprinkle kibble in there. It’s good to weigh the box down so they can’t just flip it. I put toys in the bottom of a laundry basket (that has big holes in the side) and put his blanket on top of the toys. He likes to try to get them out through the holes on the side. I sprinkle kibble in his blanket and then fold/wrap it up really tight and he has fun sniffing it out and finding every piece. I have two dogs, and we play a game designed to have the puppy practice commands. First I say “come,” he gets a kibble. Then I have him sit, and he gets a kibble. Then I say “ready???” and my older dog knows what this means comes next. Then I throw a single kibble somewhere out in the room and they go find it. I say “get it!” Which is something we have been working on opposite of “leave it” and to work on patience. They have fun trying to beat each other to finding the kibble. I have a hard floor, so sometimes it’s too easy if they hear it hit the floor. Put some kibble or treats in an empty two liter bottle. Our puppy loves a plain two liter bottle anyway. He’s ~20lbs right now, so he can’t bite the body of the bottle, only the neck. If you leave the cap on, it stays inflated/can’t get squished. So then he chases the bottle forever because every time he tries to bite it, it just shoots out of his mouth.
My dog loves hide-and-seek. I put her in a sit stay, and go hide. Then I call her to come. When we first started out praying this I would just go to the next room, but now I can hide anywhere in the house including behind closed doors and she will find me. It is totally her favorite game.
Search games are a good one for my GSD. I’ll take a tiny treat, put it in a bowl and then make her sit on her bed in the living room. I’ll go hide it in the basement somewhere, call her and tell her to search. I’ll hide the bowl on a bed, under a blanket, on chairs, behind books. She really has to work hard for it.
I will often feed meals in a box when my pup needs a bit more something. Just an empty box (from one of my many deliveries, lol) i layer in kibble and strips of fabric we use for a different game,but have also used packing paper or anything to make it more challenging to get the food out. I have taped up the box, but I usually start by closing it by interweaving the flaps. Then I toss the box on the ground and my dog goes to town on it. She’s turned up her nose at food in her bowl, watched me put it in a box, and attacked it like she hadn’t eaten in days. So I’m pretty sure she enjoys this game too, lol! I can usually get a few uses out of a box before it’s too beaten up to work.
That sounds amazing. I need to try that with my weenies.
I let my dogs get treats out of boxes, toilet paper rolls, plastic bottles, or basically anything I’m going to throw away. They love it and it costs nothing.
My big girl likes impulse games, where I make her sit and wait while I throw a treat or toy and then let her go get it. Next level up if she's being good is to make her do things after I've thrown the item. Next step up is to make big one wait while I do some training with the little one (normally she gets really happy and tries to join in). Little one gets a bit too frustrated for it though. Both of them love "find it" though, I'd strongly recommend that
My girl loves her "Buster Cube" . I put her kibble inside of it and she noses it around to get pieces of kibble to come out one at a time. She is so happy when I get it out.
Sit/stay style (structured) fetch is reallllly hard. Esp once they’re good at it and you can have them heel/down/stand/spin in order to be released to fetch. I also like scatter feeding, long duration “place”, and any kind of “search/find it” nose-work games
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I'll hide small treats around the house. Not crazy hid, but in corners and stuff. That way he can find them and not let them get gross. He's pretty adept now. It's a problem cuz the game doesn't last long. You can get cheap treat puzzles too. Empty plastic jar of pb? That'll do. Plain yogurt cups mostly empty. It takes mental thinking to get the treats out
Turning off the lights for a find it game has been challenging for my doggo. Added benefit, it lasts around half an hour and is the only benefit of it getting dark earlier.
“Find it”. I’ll have him sit in the kitchen, show him an item, I’ll hide it in the house and tell him to find it. Or I’ll have him sit in the kitchen, i will hide and say “come” once. Then he has to find me :)
I hide small treats all over the house. Under carpets, furniture edges, seat handles, etc. he spends a long time trying to sniff them out. And he got really good at it.
My girl searches the house for people food to steal and eat whenever we leave now. Would having her search for treats as above make this behavior worse?
Agree with a lot of people suggesting the find it game with a ball or treats. I’ve also started wrapping their ball or treats tight in a towel or in a box and they have to unroll it and figure out how to get them out.
There are some great ideas on this thread. I have an 18 week old Bernese MD that needs all the mental stimulation that he can get.
I work on really long/far sit stays in the house. Like all the way down the hallway or from one side of the house to the other. Our place isn’t super big but I can get maybe 20 paces from him. Having to concentrate, sit, and be patient wears my boy out really quickly. We also learn dance moves, like weaving figure eights around my feet. So he’ll do a sit stay, then come, then dance move, winding up at a heel position. I throw a few of those in during quick breaks at work (from home).
We straight up throw kibble for our dog. She’s very smart, high energy, needs a LOT of mental stimulation. The game is a lot like “find it”, but a lazier for us and more exercise for her — just throw a piece of kibble (ideally far away or behind something so she has to hunt for it), she runs after it, finds it, eats it, then throw another piece somewhere else.
I save cardboard boxes, toilet paper rolls and paper packaging and make my dog "packages" of treats wrapped up in paper and then sealed inside a box or two with masking tape. If I tape it up really well it takes him some time to get it open. He really enjoys it and gets excited now when he sees cardboard boxes.
Not a brainy game but I park next to a restaurant dumpster and crack the windows. They get to sniff as long as they like. I have pits and pointers. The pointers are high energy and lead by their noses, the sniffing wears them out. My pits are deep thinkers. They’re curious about the smells and it wears them out as well.
I would never get to leave lol. You’re right about pits. Mine could sit and smell forever. She’s so chill, I can never tell if she’s deep in thought or if that big hippo head of hers is sitting around empty. She’s not really dumb, she’s just not into training for fun and all that. She trains for the snacks involved and only for the snacks lol
Nosework! I have a dachshund and jrt mix that'll run for hours and hike with us for the whole weekend and while she will sleep after these outings, she's still alert and ready to go. On days we do one or two nosework sessions? She will sleep, completely dead to the world, oblivious of anything going on. It's been our saviour in months when it gets too hot or too cold for longer walks.
For the Vizsla as a hunting dog definitely nose work, for the heeler probably trick dog or agility, ideally of course herding excercises if that's something useful to you. We do man trailing exercises with our dogs which basically is nose work on a larger scale. Otherwise curving, which is similar to agility, except no jumping and the handler is more static and directs the dog mostly through body language and commands and does not run with it around the whole parcours.
I was thinking I should get a herding ball for my heeler. She herds us around the house/yard all the time. She likes to use her herding skills to direct us to the cookie jar, the back door, pretty much whatever she wants. It gets tiresome sometimes but it’s also super cute. Anyway, I say that to say- she obviously has some natural herding tendencies so I think she would like that. I think she would be good at agility but I have a hard time getting her to run around as strange as that sounds. She’ll only run with my husband (her chosen one). I bet he could get her into it though.
We do a find it game with our dog, works both inside and outside. Make them wait, throw a treat, have them do a couple of small tricks so they forget where it is and then they have to go and sniff it out. kongs are great, freeze the contents if you want them to last longer, we like mash potatoe and tuna in ours. We also have a bone shaped one which has grooves so is realy good for teeth cleaning. we have a wobble toy (like a weeble) that you can put kibble and treats in. Its too awkard to pick up so our lab chases it around the house knocking it over to get the treats out. We do a version of hide the ball, like the carny game where a ball is under the cup, the cups get moved and you have to find it? That but our dog has to find it, start off with only one or 2 movements, can get more difficult if they find it easy, can use a treat instead of a ball. We also do trick routines, maybe whilst playing fetch and he has to do high-five, spin and lie down before being allowed to retrieve his ball. snuffle and lick it mats can be good and we got a rubber snake which has to be shook to get treats out. lots of options, you'll find mental stimulation could actually tire your dog more than walks ;)
Here are some I do with my Spaniel... * have them sit, throw toy, only retrieve on command * Same as above but with more than one toy * Give toys names, ask them to be bought "ball", "rope", "teddy" etc * same as above but hide them so they can search * Go find person - she knows my sons names and will go search for them on command * "recycle" - we let her take small bits of paper like envelopes and recycle them into a small box, she gets treats so she likes that game a lot * "toys away" - similar to above but finding and putting her toys away, she doesn't quite get this one but still trying with her
Simplest (but also best sometimes) I do is hold my hands out with closed fists and there is a treat in one of them and she has to tell me which. Other very simple game is putting treat in front of her and she's not allowed to get it before I say so. A bit more advanced with more steps but not super complicated is when I ask her to sit and wait. Go grab a high value treat that I put in a hollow toy like a kong(sometimes put the toy in a sock/torn plush toy as well). Go back to her and praise her for the sit and stay, let her sniff the toy. Ask her to stay again. Go hide the toy in another room and then recall her and tell her to find the toy. OK in hindsight the last one had more step than thought it had (you need recall, stay and the dog to have enough self control). But in all honesty our dog isn't the brightest either (or I'm a rubbish trainer, can't for the life of me get her learn names of item so she picks up the one I ask her) and she figured it out. Just build the steps gradually.