10 Ways To Make Walks Awesome
Given the current restrictions, I know a lot of people – and dogs – are struggling with walks being a lot less interesting and more repetitive now. Especially if they’re used to being off lead with their friends!
The good news is they don’t have to be! By building in a few things on your dog’s walks, you can reinvent the same location or route with lots of fun activities for your dog. They’ll love working with you and it’ll help build up their focus and engagement with you outdoors as well. These ideas will make walks start to be about time that your dog gets to do awesome things with you, instead of everything else being more interesting!
Here’s my top 10 ideas to get you started on reinventing your walks as fun training and play sessions. You can make the world your playground by looking at everything in your environment as an opportunity to do something fun with your dog.
Note - there’s a video of these below as well if you want to see them in action!
Urban agility – add some jumps
Urban agility – try weaving
Tricks – teach them a spin
Tricks – teach them ‘paws up’
Practice recall – play ‘chase me’
Practice recall – do a ‘restrained recall’
Add some nosework – play ‘find it’
Practice Obedience
Ditch the bowl – take their meal with you to scatter
Go on a ‘Sniffari’ – let their nose take the lead
There’s plenty of other ideas too! Look up ‘Dog Parkour’, teach them some other new tricks, learn more nosework games or even start learning about Rally-O. Or you can just stay home and get creative! Set up obstacle courses inside or in the backyard. You can also practice nosework or recall games at home and still have fun together. This is an excellent time to build up your relationship with your dog and help them learn new things. Plus getting them to use their brain and get some ‘mental exercise’ will tire them out a lot faster too.
If you enjoyed this or you want to find out more about anything featured in the video, please get in touch. I’d love to hear what you’re doing to keep your dog happy in challenging times. #traintokeepsane