# Indoor game ideas?



## Icingss (Aug 8, 2018)

Hi all,
What games did you play with your puppy before you could take them for walks? Our little Mik is so smart so gets bored quickly. I don’t want to be frustrated with her because she can’t help it! Her exercise now consists of tug of war or ball games in the garden, some training etc. We give her stuff to chew on to keep her happy too.
Any suggestions? Thanks!


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## Aly (May 26, 2011)

Simple, 5 minute training sessions, scattered throughout the day, always works for me with babies. Make it fun, few corrections, lots of positivity and treats. Stonnie Dennis has some good videos:


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## car2ner (Apr 9, 2014)

Hide and seek, both yourselves and / or toys and / or treats. Start teaching different reward markers, one for getting a treat from you , one for going to get a treat and another for catching one. Do body awareness games with little obstacle courses out of stuff around the house to walk over and crawl under. Catch the Bug if you have hard wood floors. I'd slide a few bits of kibble across the floor for my pup to pounce on. My grown dogs still like that game. Try On Your Mark Get Set Go. I sit on the floor facing my pup. I put a toy down between us. No one touches it until I say go and then we both grab for it. Follow with a little tug play before resetting.


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## Icingss (Aug 8, 2018)

Thanks car2ner, these suggestions are ace! I’ll try some of these today.

As for training Aly, I do this often with Mik already in the day and yeah it totally makes a difference to her behaviour! Thanks for the video too, I’ll check it out later ?


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## Aly (May 26, 2011)

Love the Hide and Seek game! Totally forgot about that. There's an unexpected bonus in all of this in that not only are you teaching the pup engagement, you're also introducing/teaching all sorts of new words and commands ---- even ones you didn't realize you were teaching. 

Here's an example of the bonus you can get from these sessions. This just happened last week. I did lots of H&S with Rachel when she was younger ("Where's the Kong? Find the Kong!") which she loved. From there, we progressed to simple nosework games. (Not too terribly systematically, I must confess, the goal was to get her engaged, focus her brain and get her more settled in the house). One day, after _hours_ at the computer, I realized that I hadn't seen Claude (adolescent cat) all day. That was odd because Rachel and Claude are best buds and they're usually rampaging about. Because Claude likes to 'help' with data analyses , his absence was striking. 

So, I got up and said (mostly to myself or so I thought), "Huh. Where's Claude? Haven't seen him all day." Rachel jumps up, dances around, nudges me to the stairwell (my office is in the basement, off the family room) and proceeded to lead me up two flights of stairs, to my bedroom, where she stuck her big head under my bed. Two beats later, out crawls a sleepy Claude who'd been napping there. 

Guess we'll have to start baby tracking games next...

:grin2:

Aly


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## Kairo's Dad (Jul 4, 2018)

On a rainy day, I'll sometimes play the cup game with Kairo with a couple of plastic cups, and I will put a ball under a cup, then move them around on the hardwood floor, and ask him to find his ball. He'll push the cup with his nose or paw at the cup that the ball is under. Will also use his interactive ball and cut some carrots up to put inside the interactive ball, and he'll bounce it all around the house til all the carrots have fallen out. Lately, we are also working on "restraint" by teaching Kai to sit at an interior door and not walking through til I give the "ok" to walk through. Great exercise to teach if your dog tends to dart out the front door whenever you open it.


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## Icingss (Aug 8, 2018)

These tips are fantastic! Thank you all so much xx


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## Icingss (Aug 8, 2018)

Love the story Aly : ) x


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## car2ner (Apr 9, 2014)

Kairo's Dad said:


> On a rainy day, I'll sometimes play the cup game with Kairo with a couple of plastic cups, and I will put a ball under a cup, then move them around on the hardwood floor, and ask him to find his ball. He'll push the cup with his nose or paw at the cup that the ball is under. Will also use his interactive ball and cut some carrots up to put inside the interactive ball, and he'll bounce it all around the house til all the carrots have fallen out. Lately, we are also working on "restraint" by teaching Kai to sit at an interior door and not walking through til I give the "ok" to walk through. Great exercise to teach if your dog tends to dart out the front door whenever you open it.


I used to play the cup game with 3 red Solo cups. The hard part was getting my boy to sit still while I hid the treat under a cup. I did that on a coffee table to make sitting on the floor more comfortable for me.


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## Cassidy's Mom (Mar 30, 2003)

I like to start puppies with the impulse control game It's Yer Choice: 






This is like a default leave it because you don't give any commands, the dog learns that the way to get the food in your hand is to ignore it, so they start to do it by default whenever you have something it wants. You can spend a few minutes every day with this game using her meals as the treat. I like to add in eye contact too, so she must ignore the food and focus on me instead. 

When you actually teach "leave it", whatever you're using as the object (food, toy, etc.), the dog is not allowed to get. If it's a toy, you can pick it up and play with her with it, if it's food, you can do that too, or just drop it back into your treat bag, but she's not allowed to just take it. I want my dogs to learn that everything is mine until I decide to give it to them. 

Are you making her sit and wait while you put her food on the floor and then releasing her to eat? That's something else I do from the beginning. I start out very easy and release immediately, then work up to the puppy remaining in a sit and making eye contact with me before giving permission to eat. 

I like to name the toys, and then send my puppy to get them and bring them to me. If you're tugging, leg go and take a couple of steps backwards, encouraging her to bring it and tug some more. I can say "where's your ball? Bring me the ball", and she'll look around, find the nearest ball and bring it to me to toss for her.


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## Cassidy's Mom (Mar 30, 2003)

We got Halo at 10 weeks old, and she started puppy class three weeks later. I did the It's Yer Choice game with a portion of her lunch kibble every day. This is the second week of class, so she would have been 14 weeks old - I have food in both hands, which she's ignoring it while watching me: 










And here there's food on the floor in front of her: 










This is her at around the same age waiting to be released to eat:


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## Icingss (Aug 8, 2018)

Yep I give her some commands (sit, paw...) and then set the bowl down and tell her to look at me. She’s only allowed to eat after I say ‘take it’! She’s very good at this - took to it almost immediately, my lovely girl ?


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## Mei (Mar 30, 2018)

There's so many great ideas! Our favorite is hide and seek!

We also have these puzzle games we got from chewy.com that are fun. Even though she gets through it very fast, she doesn't seem to get bored of them! Here's video of what puzzle games I'm talking about.

She's so small in this video!! Probably at 12 weeks!


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## Icingss (Aug 8, 2018)

Nice - thank you Mei, I’ll check out that website then! I’m sure Miki would love a puzzle toy like this. Cute video btw! X


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## Datura (Feb 16, 2018)

Dean is 15 weeks old, and one of his favorite games is find the snackies. 
I will take little bits of treat (I make my own out of raw chicken. I cut it up and put it in the dehydrator) and I will either hide them around the living room. Under toys, blankets, ecetera, and then let him search them out. We've just recently started playing the game outside in the yard, and in his kiddie pool. After about 15-20 minutes he is ready for a nap.


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## Icingss (Aug 8, 2018)

I’ll have to try this, thanks Datura - Miki will love it!


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## Malibu (Jul 27, 2017)

Mei said:


> There's so many great ideas! Our favorite is hide and seek!
> 
> We also have these puzzle games we got from chewy.com that are fun. Even though she gets through it very fast, she doesn't seem to get bored of them! Here's video of what puzzle games I'm talking about.
> 
> ...


I was searching for things to do during the winter with my dog and came across this thread and my question is this. Is this really as good and fun as it looks or would I kick myself in the A** for teaching my dog such tricks. :surprise:


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## Mei (Mar 30, 2018)

Malibu said:


> Mei said:
> 
> 
> > There's so many great ideas! Our favorite is hide and seek!
> ...


What do you mean? What would you regret?


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## car2ner (Apr 9, 2014)

I guess the pup could learn to open doors, cabinets, etc.


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## Mei (Mar 30, 2018)

car2ner said:


> I guess the pup could learn to open doors, cabinets, etc.


Hasn't taught Mei that lol. She'll stand at the door waiting for me to open it even with like a 2 inch crack lol


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## Malibu (Jul 27, 2017)

The fact that I would be teaching my dog how to open and get into things. cupboards,drawers,doors,anything with a handle.

It looks like an awesome game for dogs but I want to know what others think. It seems teaching this game could come back to haunt you.


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## Mei (Mar 30, 2018)

Malibu said:


> The fact that I would be teaching my dog how to open and get into things. cupboards,drawers,doors,anything with a handle.
> 
> It looks like an awesome game for dogs but I want to know what others think. It seems teaching this game could come back to haunt you.


I'll still get it out every now and then and put treats in it. She's 10 months now and has not learned how to open cupboards and what not. I'm pretty sure it would all depend on the dog, as they are all different.


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## Pawsed (May 24, 2014)

One of our indoor games it to put a treat in a large plastic jar, one that had animal crackers in it. The opening is small enough that he can't get his head in and deep enough that he can't reach it with his mouth. He has to figure out how to get the treat out. It works with smaller toys and balls, too, anything that will fit through the hole at the top.


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