Life: Doggy Enrichment

[escritoireazul]

One of the things I'm working on this year is to add more doggy enrichment into Cuddle Monster's life. Today, I started with the thing where you put treats in an old muffin pan and cover them with tennis balls. It took a few times showing her how to do it, but by the end, she found her treats just fine. I'm thrilled by this and will try it again tomorrow night.

Other things I am considering is a bit of indoor grass so she can forage for her food and some sort of toy where she has to work at it to get her food or treats out of it, but I'm not sure about that one. If she liked other dogs at all, I'd enroll her in classes (especially agility classes -- she's a cattle dog and she loves to run and jump and climb things), but I've hit a point where I can't go any farther with her socialization and yet I don't trust anyone to take her and do it, either.

(She never attacks my dad's little dog, and she tolerates my brother's dog so long as he doesn't try to mount her, and since those are two of the three dogs she encounters in our homes, that's enough. She hates J's family dog, but they live close enough now they don't bring the dog when they come visit, and we don't take Cuddle Monster with us when we go up to them.

I was doing really well with her socialization until we moved someplace without any off-leash dog parks. She was to the point where she liked playing with the other dogs in the off-leash parks in the city, but then we moved to a small town to be closer to family, and alas, all that socialization went out the window.)

She's now collapsed on the couch next to me, napping, so I think the treat game was a success.

I know a bunch of you have dogs. Any suggestions for games/tricks/etc.? (She knows a handful of tricks, and I'd like to add more to that list this year.) She's 50 pounds and probably 8 years old. (She's a rescue, so when I got her, the listed age was only an estimate.)

Comments

[netgirl_y2k]

My own cuddle monster is in the middle of six weeks cage rest with a broken leg, so we've been all about the enrichment.

So far the biggest hits have been:

Putting her dog food in a Kong and freezing it.
Treats in an empty plastic bottle, and then when she got the hang of that putting the bottle inside an old sock.
Hiding her kibble around the room so she has to sniff it out.
Tricks wise, in the last three weeks I've taught her high-five, play dead, and half of roll over.

[escritoireazul]

These are great, thank you! I'm going to try the empty plastic bottle trick first, and maybe the hiding the kibble one, too. (The downside to that is we have mostly open space with no real place to actually hide things that she can get to, but maybe just spreading it out in different places and making her find it will work.)

[cyprinella]

We've got two food dispensing wobbling toys of different difficulty levels. Greta was a food wobbler genius, Zille not so much.

Easy: https://smile.amazon.com/KONG-PW1-Wobbler-Large/dp/B003ALMW0M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1514940829&sr=8-1&keywords=kong+wobbler

Hard: https://smile.amazon.com/StarMark-Bob-Lot-Interactive-Large/dp/B001JQLNB4/ref=pd_sim_199_8?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B001JQLNB4&pd_rd_r=KPS2Y7037D0AQ0AG6T4P&pd_rd_w=NbDES&pd_rd_wg=fVFmq&psc=1&refRID=KPS2Y7037D0AQ0AG6T4P

Have you tried hiding bits of food in different things and then telling her to find it? You can start off really simple and then work up the difficulty.

The Do More With Your Dog Trick Dog Title (she had it before the AKC started a version) has a great list of tricks. If you want to invest in her books, they talk about ways to teach them. http://www.domorewithyourdog.com/trickdog/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=45&Itemid=146 (the list is on the application PDF) One thing not on her list that I found really useful with Greta was "stand on that" where I could point at a thing and she'd stand or jump on it. Sort of like "go to bed/mat" but it could be anything I pointed at (usually furniture or a tree stump for pictures).

[escritoireazul]

These are fantastic suggestions, thank you. I'm going to start with the "stand on that" one this week, in part because I think it will be fun for her and in part because pictures. 90% of my pictures are of her sleeping because that's when she's still, so I particularly love that benefit of this trick.

[cyprinella]

It definitely makes for fun pics!



Also very useful at the vet! No manhandling to get them on the scale.

[karanguni]

I miss having a pupper! Alas, it's been a few years since my left this world, but he was a sheepdog too and I used to train him to do jumps over things just by waving a treat around..

[escritoireazul]

... I have no idea why I've never considered just training her to jump over things on my own. That is a great idea, thanks!

[scripsi]

Make a hole in a tennisball, big enough to get a treat out. work well for our dogs. we've tried buying similar toys, but Tom breaks them within ten minutes so he can get all the treats at once... a tennis ball is both cheaper and sturdier.

[escritoireazul]

This is a great idea! One of the things I was worried about is that she's really good at destroying toys (even ones claimed to be hard to destroy) in minutes. Tennis balls seem to work for her (possibly because she only plays with them, doesn't sit around chewing on them), and this seems like a good way to test out if she'll even like the treat game.

[evil_little_dog]

Can you play hide-n-seek with her? That was my dogs' favorite game while we were housebound. They had to sit and stay in an area, then I'd sneak off and hide. Even if they knew where I was 'hiding', they loved the game of 'finding' me.

I usually hid behind something - a doorway, partially up the stairs. When they found me, I'd make a big deal of it. This is really good for recall.

[escritoireazul]

I have never tried, but that sounds like a lot of fun, and fairly easy to implement. Thank you!

[evil_little_dog]

It's a fun bonding game.

Another fun game is to get some small boxes/paper bags/what have you and put a toy in one of them (or treat) for your dog to find. Scentwork is a lot of fun for your dog and you can teach her to find other things, too!

[chase_acow]

Did you ever watch It's Me or the Dog? I loved Victoria Stilwell and recently rediscovered her on facebook. Here's the page to the dog enrichment section of her website -> https://positively.com/dog-wellness/dog-enrichment/ which might have some more ideas for you. : )

[escritoireazul]

I haven't! I'll check that out, it looks really interesting. Thanks!