Snow Days for Dogs: Indoor Enrichment for You & Your Dog
We all love games. We all have favourite foods that we consider treats. With dogs, we can combine both! Scent/brain games are highly beneficial to our dogs as they stimulate the cognitive side of our dog’s brain, which in turn, exhausts our dog’s brain. These games also build our dog’s confidence as they ‘win’ by finding their food.The materials for these games are already in your home. No need to buy anything! Mix treats with dry kibble for use in the games.
Engage your dog with these games on those frigid frosty winter days:
ROLLED TOWEL GAME
Using an old towel, place treats/kibble mix in a single row down the middle of the full length of the towel. Add a few high-value treats at one end of the roll. Starting at the high-value treat end, roll the towel up jelly-roll style. As your dog gets better at this game, tie the two ends of the towel together to make a circle. Add another filled towel to make two interlocking donut shapes. To increase difficulty, add as many filled towels as possible.
TREATS IN BOXES
Gather your light cardboard recycling! Start by placing treats inside of empty toilet paper rolls and fold the ends in. Hide these or toss these for your dog to find. Egg cartons are a dog favourite. To make this more difficult, keep adding layers of boxes or multiples of toilet paper rolls inside a larger box and hide them among furniture to be discovered!
TREAT TUBES EXTRAVAGANZA
Using a small low cardboard box (a shoe box is perfect), place a series of toilet paper tubes upright on the folded end so they stand vertically inside the box. Drop in kibble/treats mixture inside some but not all the tubes. As a bonus - you can add a scant layer of treats under the tubes before you fill the box with the standing tubes. To increase difficulty, add balls to rest on top of the toilet paper tube’s open ends.
