If you’re experiencing pushy behaviours around a certain time every day, if your dog is unable to settle until they’ve had a ‘good run’, or if your dog drags you to the place they expect to visit twice a day, you may have fallen victim to a schedule!
No dog in the world, not even a high energy breed, needs to run around for 3 hours a day. All dogs need exercise, but have you considered you will make your dog fitter the more exercise you provide?
What can you do to tire your dog instead?
We know most people have a schedule of their own due to work. If we had a job with strict hours, we’d decide when we realistically had time to give our dog attention and we’d do a mix of activities around those time slots.
Maybe you have about 30 mins in the morning, an hour at lunch and another hour after work.
Why not make one or two of those an opportunity for exercise and swap even one of those for mental enrichment? The most tiring form of stimulation 😉
At the very least, please try to alternate WHEN your dog goes for a walk to eliminate patterning behaviours. If your dog continues to bother you until they have their walk, try:
• teaching a Place cue ✅
• 5-10 mins of knackering toy play – most dogs prefer that to an hour dragging you around the block! It’s certainly more fulfilling ✅
• desensitising your dog to ‘going for a walk’ cues e.g. putting your coat on, grabbing their lead & the house keys ✅
We said today at a handover that our dogs would drive us mad if they expected a walk at the same time every day!
Your dog deserves appropriate amounts of physical stimulation & mental enrichment, but you don’t deserve to have your life controlled by your dog 👍🏻
