Walks are great, but enriching your dog is even better! Here area. Few cheap, easy and fun things that will help enrich your dog. They also have the added bonus of encouraging calmness, increasing confidence, and developing their tolerance to frustration.
Licky mats encourage licking, which is also very calming for your dog. Our favorites include peanut better (no sugar), coconut oil, pumpkin (no sugar), or kefir. I tend to use coconut oil or peanut butter when I want it to last a bit longer, like in the case of doing nail trims for Raj. Some licky mats have suction cups on the back so they can easily be stuck to a wall and then voila! I can trim his nails.
My dogs and dogs that I have trained love cardboard confidence games. Get one of those Amazon boxes you have and put some treats around it. No sweat if your dog doesn't want to go inside the box. You can use smaller or more shallow boxes to start. This makes it easier. Not all dogs will want to get in right away and that is okay. You can slowly build that up. NEVER pull your dog to the box or force them in. This isn't the 1980's and we aren't just pushing our friends into the deep end so they will get over their fear of swimming. I love cardboard confidence-as your dog grows confidence you can make the challenge harder by adding in boxes. Closing the boxes. Putting boxes in boxes with treats. I even hide frozen kongs around all the paper or boxes. They love searching for their food. And the cool thing is you can make it new each week as you get new boxes.
The easiest game to play is a scatter feed in the grass. It is as simple as it sounds. Take some kibble or cheese and throw it in the grass. In the beginning, as your dog is building his grittiness, you are going to want to throw out one piece at a time and point it out so he can easily find it. Eventually, you can literally throw it out there and he will search and search. Sniffing is so calming for dogs. You can make this game easier by scattering the food on concrete or kitchen floor while you teach them 'to go sniff'. You can make this game harder by scattering the food in taller grasses.
I also use this game while on walks. I'll tell my dog to 'go sniff' and throw some kibble in the grass to encourage sniffing. Then I ask for a heel or sit or some other command, rinse and repeat. I give my dog permission to go smell stuff. He gets what he wants and I get what a want (a nice loose leash for the rest of the walk).
Fancy toys are cool and all, but sometimes you just want something free and easy to implement. Send me pictures of your dogs doing one of the above activities!
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