Tips on helping to tire out your pooch when your under a time crunch.
The holiday season is hard for dogs – especially when the humans are too busy to meet their regular exercise requirements. Between cold weather, holiday baking, and all the holiday gatherings our dog’s needs tend to take a bit of a back burner. By adding in these tips you can make sure to get the time you do have for your dog used to their greatest energy busting potential!
- Ditch the short leash side way walk. Put on the winter boots, attach them to a long line and hit a nice open green space. The focus here is slow meandering sniffing. Sniffing is incredible to tire out your dog and having them on a longer lead encourages them to spend more time with their nose to the ground verses focusing on the humans movements!
PRO TIP: Dog not super sniffy? Pre-sprinkle the area with Parmesan cheese or liver dust to encourage less fast movement and more nose down meandering. - Make their food work for you. Utilize different food dispensing toys for their meals during all the holiday shuffling. Kongs & Toppl’s can be filled with watered down kibble and frozen for a longer and more tiring challenge. Treat balls, Kong Wobblers, and other purchased treat toys are also great. If you do not have any of these presently, you can always DIY many different food dispensing toys with the help of google and some commonly found household items. Food dispensing toys usually utilize your dogs sense of smell along with their problem solving abilities. These things can give you at least two moments during the day that the dog is tiring themselves out without you needing to be too involved.
PRO TIP: By utilizing more than just one puzzle toy and rotating it your dog will take longer to become efficient at the puzzle. The less efficient the more brain drain potential! - Practice makes perfect. Focus on reinforcing calmness rather than driving up excitement. Practice calm behaviours like their place cue or helping them generalize changing positions rather than throwing the ball in the back yard when you have a moment during the holidays.
PRO TIP: Do quick 3-5 rep sessions multiple times during the day. Have five minutes to wait before basting the turkey? Sweet, practice your dog going to their ‘dinner place’ while your in the kitchen! - Work their nose. Hide some of their kibble in boxes or in the back yard. The goal is to have it hard enough that they need to use their nose to search but easy enough that they are not giving up and need you to point out the rewards. Though dogs have incredible noses; if they do not have practice they will rely on their sense of sight if possible.
PRO TIP: 20 minutes of nose work can equate to a 2 hour walk in terms of expending energy.
After all is said and done, optimize your moments with your dogs by focusing on providing enriching, energy draining mental stimulation. Keeping in mind that arousing activities decreases your dogs ability to think which might not help them maintain their best behaviour while guest are over.