2017 Gift Guide for Your Bored Dog and You

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Sometimes you just can’t deal with your bored dog. You need your dog to settle down. Maybe you’re sick or really stressed out or juggling multiple other tasks but your dog is pacing and whining and throwing a fit. Or insisting that it is walk time right now despite the flood/thunderstorm/wildfire/hurricane outside. How do you deal with your bored dog? Due to a recent rash of of illnesses and injuries in our house, we’re very experienced with coping with a dog who need more to do. This gift guide for your bored dog and you (trust me, you’ll both benefit) offers a variety of suggestions for things to do with your dog.

Gift Guide for Your Bored Dog and You
*If you buy from the Amazon links listed on this blog, it won’t cost you extra but we will get a few pennies that go towards running the blog and Mr. N’s treat allowance!

2017 Gift Guide for Your Bored Dog and You

With Light Supervision:

Snuffle Mat:

I’m not quite sure who first came up with the idea of snuffle mats but thank you, Mr. N loves his. I didn’t think he would like it as he usually goes through puzzle toys pretty quickly and it doesn’t take very long to “solve” but he’s obsessed. He he’s always interested in sniffing out food from it and will accept lower value treats. You basically scatter some food across a fleece mat and the dogs sniff them out. It’s a good way to make them “hunt” for their food especially if you feed kibble.

Chews:

Dogs were made to chew. Chews give them something to work on and can be soothing. Mr. N will run and get his chews to deal with the excitement of guests in the house. If you get the right chew (interest and difficulty-wise), peace and quiet will reign. Except for the sound of dogs chomping but just think of it as like being at the zoo.

Puzzle Toys:

Puzzle toys are basically the screen time of the dog world. When you need a quiet block of time to yourself, you scoop some treats into the toys and let them enjoy. There’s a wide array of toys available to accommodate your dog’s skill level and eagerness. Some toys play more nicely with hard floors than others.

BUSTER Activity Mat

If your dogs enjoy solving puzzles, here is multiple puzzles in one with adjustable difficulty levels. The activity mat comes with three different puzzles to start off with and you can buy more to add on as they solve the other ones.

With You:

Clicker and Trick Book

With a clicker, you can train almost anything. I’ve taught Mr. N how to put his toys in the toy box, do nosework, and jump through a hoop using a clicker and treats. Clicker training and shaping gives their brain a good workout. And you can just sit the entire time you’re doing it unless you’re training something particularly active. And if you need more ideas, this book offers 101 tricks to train.

Conditioning Equipment

If your dog can’t go to the great outdoors gym, you bring the gym to them. Mr. N has the FitPaws bone and we work on rear and front paw targeting, body awareness and coordination. I’m pretty sure his core strength is way better than mine.

Furbo Dog Camera and Treat Dispenser

The Furbo not only lets you spy on your dog, it can also toss treats to your dog. From a distance. You open up the app and swipe and tada! Treat comes flying. This makes it great for working on things that require distance. Like sending your dog to his bed from across the room. And that way you can reward your dog as soon as soon as they accomplish the behavior you want and you don’t have to keep walking back and forth across the room.

Which products do you use with your dog when they’re bored?

 

 

Comments

comments

 

7 Responses

  1. Jana Rade

    November 30, 2017 10:10 am

    I imagine there might be a lot of bored dogs out there, particularly with most of them stuck home alone for most of the day. Anything that can keep them busy is great. Cookie doesn’t get bored 😉

    Reply
  2. Jan K

    December 2, 2017 3:36 pm

    You decided to do the gift guide…and what a great angle on it! For some reason, Luke is always bored in the evening after he has his supper. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done all day. We get out toys, but he easily loses interest in them (I cannot afford to buy a new toy for every day!!).
    These are some good ideas, though with two dogs it’s harder to use things that toss treats or are long lasting., because they’ll fight over them. But getting out the clicker and learning something new always makes Luke happy (at 13 years old Cricket is happy to just sleep most of the time!!).

    Reply

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