7 Easy Ways to Give Your Dog a Good Time!
Got a dog and a baby? If you do, you’re probably so busy that you don’t know whether you’re coming or going sometimes.
When that happens, it’s easy to put your dog on the back burner. After all, dogs sleep a lot, up to 17 hours a day, and many dogs are very patient about waiting for their turn for play and attention.
But eventually, even the most mellow dog wants a little love from his people. And since your baby is #1 on your to-do list, as a loving pet parent, it’s easy to feel guilty when you just don’t have time for your dog, and you start seeing those sad, puppy dog eyes.
Fortunately, there are quick and easy ways to keep your dog happily occupied, even without taking much extra time - maybe just 5 minutes while your baby is napping?
PRODUCTS TO SLOW DOWN YOUR DOG’S MEALTIME
Make your dog’s feeding times an adventure for him. Products that slow down your dog when he’s eating will make his mealtime last longer and be more fun for him. After all, in the wild, animals forage or hunt for their food; in nature there’s no such thing as getting a whole day’s food all at once. So take advantage of the many slow feeders on the market. Here are some examples:
SNUFFLE MATS
If you’re not familiar with these, you and your dog have a treat in store! Snuffle mats have so many places that kibble or treats can hide that they provide your dog with hours of exploration. And once you dump the food on the mat, you’re done - you don’t have to do anything more! See them here:
SLOW FEEDER DOG BOWLS
These bowls are designed so that your dog has to work to get food from them. Even dogs that scarf their food in seconds are slowed down by the right food bowl. Check out all the designs!
LICK MATS
If you feed your dog a raw diet, or give him anything soft like cottage cheese, a lick mat can give him hours of focused licking. Lick mats offer many beautiful colors and patterns.
MAKE FEEDING YOUR DOG A GAME
Here’s another way to make your dog’s mealtime fun and engaging: Hide his food! Use a couple of extra food bowls for your dog and divide his food among them. Three bowls is ideal.
Put down the first bowl for your dog, and while he’s eating, go hide the other bowls. If your dog is a very fast eater, you may have to close him in a room while you hide the rest of his meal. Then tell him to go find his food. It won’t take your dog long to figure out what to do; he’ll be hunting for his food using scent, dogs’ most important sense.
Every meal you can change where you hide the food bowls, so the places are always new to him. Some suggestions: a corner hidden by a piece of furniture (as long as your dog can get to it easily), behind an open door, in a closet with the door propped partly open, on a low shelf.
At first, make the hiding places easy, so your dog gets the idea, and then gradually make them harder. Just avoid hiding food in furniture, because that might encourage your dog to start chewing on the couch!
If you have a fenced yard, you can eventually start hiding the food bowls outside. That will give you many more options. Again, at first, make it easy for your dog, and graduate to more and more difficult places.
Just one word of caution: pick up the food bowls as soon as your dog has found them and finished eating. I hide food bowls for my own dog, and I find if I wait until the next meal to go get the bowls, I may have forgotten where I hid them. Since I don’t have my dog’s keen sense of smell, it can be quite a challenge to search my house and yard for those well-hidden food dishes!
THE MUFFIN TIN GAME
Lots of interactive food toys can be found online, and they can be a great help in keeping your dog entertained. But they can be pricey, and you can do just as well with what you have in your own house.
Lots of babies like to go through kitchen cabinets to pull out pots and pans and play with them. Well, your dog can do his own version of that activity.
If you have a muffin tin, you’re all set! Simply fill some of the depressions with your dog’s favorite treats, place a tennis ball or something similar in each muffin hole to hide the treats, and let your dog remove the balls to get to them.
The game is more fun if you don’t place treats is every hole; that way your dog can use his nose to find out which holes have treats. Or he may want to remove all the balls anyway. But as he learns how to play the game, he may get more careful about finding just the holes that have treats in them. Either way, it’s a fun activity for your dog and will only take you a few minutes.
TRICK TRAINING
Dog training to teach tricks is just as valuable as any other kind of dog training, and can be done in very short sessions, just 3-5 minutes each. Tricks are fun for your dog and give you a way to show him off when visitors come to your home. There are lots of options for learning how to teach your dog to do tricks.
Do More With Your Dog is a Facebook Group with lots of fun videos showing dogs doing the tricks they’ve learned. There are all kinds of tricks and dogs, and just watching them is fun and inspiring in itself. Once you see what people are doing with their dogs, you’ll probably want to try trick training yourself.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/954703167913037
If you’re looking for help with trick training, the Group has a list of Mentors who can help you.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DMWYDgroup/mentorship_application
And here’s a great book to show you how to train tricks. There are photos showing how to teach each trick, and tricks are listed in the back of the book according to difficulty so you can start with the easy ones.
Just a few minutes here and there can give you and your dog an enjoyable activity, keep his mind engaged, and give you some fun too as you watch him learn how to do a new trick.
Whether you’re making a game out of your dog’s feeding time, playing the Muffin Tin Game, or teaching your dog a new trick, any special attention you give your dog will help him be happier!