That’s right you heard me, last Thursday I did not walk my dog!!! No, I’m not tricking you. I didn’t take her out for a run either.
If you think back to Thursday you will remember a grey, rainy, horrible English day. These are the days dog owners dread. Getting your waterproof on and braving the rain and gales is no fun. The same can be said for some dogs.
My dog Hope is not a fan of the pouring rain or strong winds so why would I take my dog out when she is going to hate it just as much as me?
Instead we can stay in, enjoy the central heating and the shelter but most importantly have fun together.
My girl is never fed out of a normal food bowl, she always has to work for her food using some form of enrichment. It varies all the time but that morning her breakfast was fed to her in the inners of toilet rolls. It’s dead easy, squash one end, shove a few pieces of kibble in and squash the other, then give it to your dog.
That probably took fifteen to twenty minutes. Hope loves to kill soft toys, dissecting and ripping things up is one of her favourite things so killing toilet rolls and eating her food is fantastic!
I then settled down and wrote my daily email to all you lovely lot.
Later that day we had a scentwork session. Quite a lot of people get a bit scared when we talk about scentwork but it is so easy and simple to do. Throw a few treats in the grass, that’s scentwork. Play hide and seek down the park, that’s scentwork. Your dog sniffing out the scrap of food you dropped on the floor, that’s scentwork.
My girl is trained to sniff out a catnip scented mouse.
CATNIP I hear you say!!
Yes, it does make perfect sense too but I won’t explain that now.
So we had a thirty minute scentwork session which my girl adores!!
That scentwork session is the equivalent of us going for a good hours walk.
After her having a nap we had a mini trick training session messing around and doing some work on her core muscles.
Lastly her dinner was given to her in a food enrichment toy which once again made her work for her food lasting around another twenty minutes.
So my girl might not have gone for a walk but she interacted me and used her brain for around an hour and forty-five minutes.
So do you agree with me? Should I have dragged my girl out in the rain or was I right to stay in and use other ways of tiring my dog out?
If you would like to know more about scentwork and how it can help you and your dog then take a look at my Nosework Ninjas workshop. This is the only scent workshop I will run this year and places are limited so grab yours now.
www.dedicatedtodogs.co.uk
info@dedicatedtodogs.co.uk
07557983529
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