Unless you’re fortunate enough to have flexible work hours, early sunsets makes keeping up an exercise routine difficult. So what does one do to keep dogs stimulated during winter?
Bored dogs will find ways to keep themselves busy, often in just the ways we don’t want them to.
10 TIPS
1. Change how you feed meals:
2. Introduce more play:
3. Give your dog something else to do:
4: Scatter feeding: - making use of your dog’s daily food allowance, instead of extra treats, will ensure they maintain a healthy weight.
5: Do away with the food bowl and rather scatter daily meals on the floor, letting your dog search for them. If you have more than 1 dog, keep them separate to ensure each gets their daily requirement and to avoid fighting.
6. Hidden meals:Using cups hide their pellets inside a few of them and keep a few others empty. Mix them up and allow your dog to sniff out and touch the cups with food in them. When they are successful reward them by giving them the food to eat. When they’ve gotten the hang of this, increase the criteria (slowly) by adding more cups or increasing the distance between the cups.
7. Braided treats: Braid some treats into material, allowing your dog time to seek the treats out and work out how to get them free.
8. Save a cardboard box, wrap treats in newspaper, hide the paper in the box, then let them find the snacks and work out how to get to them.
9. Hide and seek: Ask for help from the family and have someone keep them busy while you walk away. Call them, with a tasty treat ready to reward them when they get to you. Increase the difficulty by adding more space between you and them and then hiding behind something. Use the game to work on their “STAY” –when they’re staying reliably on command, begin playing the game.
10. Stuffed hooves: stuff a hoof chew toy with peanut butter or tinned dog food and freeze it overnight, giving it to your dog as a high value reward to empty out.
A few things to remember:
Be cautious of feeding or using food in games with more than 1 dog around as you don’t want to encourage fighting.
The key is to make it fun for your dog, so that he remains engaged and interested. New games should be introduced slowly and difficulty levels gradually increased – keep it easy while your dog’s getting the hang of things. Break from time to time and listen to their body language
Remember to choose a reputable brand of food that has committed to ethical and safe food processes, so you know you are feeding the best that you can afford!
The Pet Food Industry Association of Southern Africa (PFI) is a non-profit, industry Association, made up of industry players that commit to the same principles and ethics of the PFI – to uphold safe, quality pet nutrition, which has the best interests of the pet as its sole purpose.
A list of members is available on
IOL adapted press release