It’s 7am on a blustery December day and Petey the Wondermutt has a very important 8am appointment for a jaunt in the woods. I can hear the wind howling outside, so I pick up my phone to check the weather. Windchill of -4 degrees!? Guess we’re stuck inside.
Last night we had seen an increase in frequency, intensity, and duration of barking when my husband (hereby known as Big Man) came home from work. I knew that meant Petey could use some time tracking scents, moving his body, investigating his surroundings, and ideally spending some time digging. An off-leash romp in the woods, a meandering walk in the cemetery on a long line, or an adventure to a nature preserve would be ideal options for engaging in most of these behaviors (I’m not going to make the cemetery grounds crew mad at me by letting him dig a hole!). But with the sudden drop in temperature, those options were off the table.
My ability to connect what Petey needs to his behavior is the result of years of observation, trial and eval, and data collection. If you need help making these connections for your dog, reach out; our behavior consultants are here for you and your family!
Outdoor time is great for everyone, but it’s not always possible to get out and about. Weather happens, injuries and illness happen, schedules happen…life happens! When your dog has needs to meet and going out for a decompression walk or sniffari just isn’t possible, it’s time for a little indoor adventure!
Setup for an indoor adventure does require effort on your part, so consider the following:
- What activities does your dog really like to engage in?
- What do you observe your dog doing after those activities?
- How much effort on your part do the activities require?
Peter is a one-of-a-kind dude (every dog is a one-of-a-kind dude), and I’ll show you an example with him later. Your options, choices, and adventure will look different. Here are some guidelines for planning indoor activities.
Choose Your Own (Indoor) Adventure
The recommendations that follow are based on species-typical behaviors that require dogs to move their bodies; this can include climbing, jumping, and walking on uneven surfaces. Depending on your dog’s age and abilities, some movements may not be appropriate for them, so keep that in mind when choosing your own adventure. Other species-typical behaviors include tracking scents, foraging for food, and manipulating or dissecting items to extract food. Depending on your dog’s level of experience with these behaviors, you may need to start with easier versions of the activity. All that to say: we don’t want your dog to be injured or frustrated by their indoor adventure!
Find It
“Find It” in my house means: I’ve put something on the ground (or close to the ground) and you need to use your sniffer to get the food. The food may be nearby but scattered (I use this mainly on walks), or it could be further away, and requires some moving around to discover the hiding places.
If you’ve never had your dog search for food or put food right on the ground for them, start with a very simple version before you work up to hiding food around the house for them. You can always help them out if they’re having a hard time locating the snacks. We don’t want our dogs to be frustrated around food, and we want this to be fun!
Here’s some ideas for getting started and then leveling up your Find It:
- Start Here: Start by simply saying “Find It!” (or whatever cue you’d like to use) and then scattering some small bits of food (kibble, treats, etc.).
- Easy Mode: Once your dog is good at finding food on the ground, you can start playing Find It in spaces that require more searching, like grass, a snuffle mat, or a box with crumpled paper.
- Casual Mode: Start to put food further away from your dog and then cue them to find it.
- Business Casual mode: If your dog has a “wait” or “place” behavior, you might cue them to stay put while you hide some food around, then cue them to find it.
- Off-road Mode: Hide treats in different rooms. I find this works best with something dry but stinky and very motivating (I often use freeze dried chicken hearts). Follow your dog to make sure you’re there if they need help. This can be really fun for both of you when you get to see your dog get excited to find their snack!
- Adventure Mode: Hide stuff all around the house and start to get creative with placement. For example, I make use of the different levels of my house so Petey has to go up and down the stairs. He is also well-versed at getting in and out of the tub, so I’ll put a mat down so it’s not slippery and hide things in there. Petey can open doors and move curtains, so I’ll hide things that require him to manipulate his environment as well.
But wait! There’s more! The sections that follow cover a couple of ways to add variety to your Find It. These methods require more time to set up and clean. When we’re looking for a harmonious household, the human end of the equation is important, which is why you should consider how much effort the activity is for you.
Destructable Find It
If you’d like to add a layer of complexity to your Find It, tuck the food into something your dog can destroy and practice the species-typical dissection behavior. Here are a couple of posts to help you teach your dog how to shred the gnar (start using paper and cardboard to practice foraging and make progressively more complex items), some ideas on what to use for shredding, and some more advanced options for foraging items.
The same levels work for this version of the game, but instead of hiding pieces of food, you’re hiding the items you have stuffed with food. After your dog sniffs out and tracks down the items, they get to pull them apart to extract their prize!
Safety First!
If your dog has a history of eating large pieces of paper or cardboard or consuming non-food items like plastic, activities with destructible elements are probably not appropriate for them. Additionally, these activities require clean-up. If your dog has a hard time with you reaching for things near them, or has a known history of resource guarding around humans, use management strategies, like putting them in a separate room, crate, or behind a gate when it’s cleanup time. A final note: Any time your dog is working on a new activity or has an item they could potentially choke on, they should be supervised. I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer, here…just a Safety Sally.
Food Puzzle Find It
You probably see where I’m going with this one. Same Find It phases, but you’re hiding toys or puzzles stuffed with food. Unlike cardboard, these toys can be stuffed with wet or gooey food like peanut butter, pumpkin, cheese, meat, etc. High value stuff that your dog will love to settle in and work on for a few minutes. Once again, you want to start simple with the way you stuff the toys to avoid frustration. Here is a great list of options for puzzle toys.
Sometimes Petey plays this game by himself by asking me to slide open the bin with his foraging toys inside.He’ll sniff around until he finds one that still has a few crumbs left and knock it around for a while until the rest fall out.
Obstacle Course
I need to begin this section by saying I have no training or expertise in canine fitness. I own some FitPaws equipment only because I got it at a deep discount and for the purpose of allowing my dog to move his body in ways similar to what he would do in a wooded setting, up and over logs and balancing on downed trees. I also want him to engage his core, because he does that to hold himself up when he digs (one of his favorite hobbies).
Safety First (again)!
Safety Sally is back for a moment. Setting up the course, for me, reflects movements that I know my dog already safely engages in without pain. If your dog is older, injured, or has specific needs as far as movement, make sure your course is safe for them. This may include consulting with your vet.
I have very little equipment that’s actually made for dogs to climb on, so I mostly use what I have in my house, including:
- Furniture
- Pillows, blankets, and cushions
- Yoga blocks, mats, and bolsters (basically also cushions)
- Stairs
- Doors
- Organizational bins
- Short stools or ottomans
- Toy bin w/ a padded top that I used as a bench
As I’ve already mentioned, I do have some FitPaws equipment:
- Balance disc: Inflatable disc of semi-hard plastic with nubby spikes on one side and ridges on the other.
- Peanut: Large inflatable that is wider on the ends and narrower in the middle. It’s shaped like a peanut.
- Egg: Even larger, smooth, egg-shaped ball that is quite squishy and hard to stand on.
- Cavaletti set: a set of cones and long plastic rods that can be inserted into the cones to make short hurdles.
Additional things in my home that are probably not normal and we use for obstacles:
- Bench press bench: for pumping iron in the basement
- Plyo box: a wood box that was made for jumping up onto
- Lovesac: a giant bean bag seat I have in my living room
When Petey and I do obstacle courses together, I use luring and shapingto guide Petey through the course I’ve set up. Again, I’m not a canine fitness expert. But I do teach humans yoga, so I know a thing or two about prepping joints for movement. I usually start by having him follow a food lure to weave around some cones. Then I start slowly on the obstacles and help him move in ways he normally would if we’re in the woods and he’s tracking a chipmunk in a tangle of fallen trees. When we use the inflatable balance balls, I lure him onto a platform first, hold on to the ball, and only have him stay on the ball as long as he’s interested. If he steps down, we move away and take a break from it.
If I’m using furniture, I use a lot of cues to have him jump up onto or off of things, or station him somewhere. I use luring to get him to go under things like the bench in front of the couch, or up and over the Lovesac. For core engagement I get him on uneven surfaces like stacked couch cushions or yoga bolsters. We also practice front and rear foot targeting on yoga blocks, blankets, and floor pillows.
An obstacle course like this requires your time and attention since you’re guiding the dog through the obstacles, but you could also set up some items to find along with simple obstacles that do not require your direct attention in luring and guiding your dog…and that’s up next.
Find It Obstacle Course
This activity combines movement with foraging. Here’s how you set it up:
- Think about the types of movement that you see your dog perform when they are going about their business or engaged in an activity you know they love.
- Hide the food items (naked, inside of a shreddable, or inside of a toy).
- Set up a structure your dog needs to move in/on/around in order to get to the hidden item.
I generally station my dog somewhere behind a gate while I set everything up, and then release and cue “find it!” I keep an eye on him, but I don’t follow him all around while he navigates his course. This is because we have practiced this activity together many times and I know he’s safe. You should definitely supervise your dog if you are both new to this activity or if your dog has special needs as far as movement. When Petey finishes the course, I just go back and make sure he got everything while I clean it all up.
Here are a few obstacles I’ve set up for Pete:
- Hide something in a closet with the door just barely open so he has to push the door open with his muzzle.
- Close a door part way and build an obstacle with bolsters (or cushions) that he needs to climb up and over to get into that room and then find the hidden item.
- Set the LoveSac up against the plyo box so he has to climb up an uneven surface to get an item I put on top of the box.
- Put a mat down inside the bath so he has to climb up into the tub and back out. I often use the bath mat for this, which has fringy bits that serve as a simple snuffle mat that I can just toss kibble into.
Because Petey is already a Find It champion in Adventure Mode, I often set up a course on more than one story in my house so he has to move his bod up and down the stairs. The stairs are also a feature of a different but related game we play that involves both of the humans in the house.
Upstairs/Downstairs
During this game, one of us recalls Petey, and then we work with him for a while before we cue him to go find the other person (“find Tiff,” or “find Big Man” are cues he knows). He has to go up or down the stairs to find the other person. We literally call this game Upstairs/Downstairs because we are nothing if not creative geniuses. We generally use this game just with his serving of food for the evening, sometimes with a higher value treat mixed in for some pizzazz.
What do we work on stuff like this:
- Known cues to guide him around the room (e.g., up onto the bed, wait, then find it)
- Short variations of Find It around the floor we are on
- Quick care with consent cues (e.g., hand targeting him and pinning his shoulder to a wall that we use at the vet as part of our sedation protocol)
- Short 2-3 minute training on new-ish cues (e.g., right now I’m trying to get him to stop sitting automatically so we’re working on auto stand)
- A short obstacle course (e.g., up and over some of the FitPaws inflatable balls)
That’s it! We just have fun for a few minutes and then send him to the other person, going back and forth until the food is used up, and end the game with a food scatter.
If you’re looking for an option that can be neatly contained into one room for easy cleanup, you might consider setting up some freework.
Freework
Here you just set up quite a few foraging options and let your dog decide what they’d like to work on and in what order. I often use Petey’s room to set up freework options and put up a gate so I don’t have to clean up the entire house after an indoor adventure. I generally include a mix of destructible items, food dispensing toys, and puzzles. Let’s use the photo below as an example. Here’s what I set up:
- Lickin layers toy – Three levels of flat discs that have indents where you can dump small bits of food or kibble. The dog spins the layers to reveal the ones underneath and extracts the food with their tongue.
- Food dispensing blob – A hollow plastic toy with four lobes and a hole in the top. The dog pushes the toy around so food falls out.
- Shoe box – I put crinkly paper inside and taped it shut so Petey had to pull it apart to get the food.
- Silicone ice mold – A green mold with hexagonal shapes. It was crap for making ice, but the indents make a great space for some kibble, which Petey extracts with his tongue.
- Giant Costco box – A box large enough for Petey to step into! It’s filled with paper, a crappy old blanket, and a paper egg carton for some reason, so he has to push things around to find the food.
The particular setup I provided as an example is pictured above, and took Petey about 20 minutes to complete, then took me maybe two minutes to clean up. We’ll look at the effort of setting up an activity compared to the behavioral benefit for the dog in a bit!
Novel Sniffing Opportunities
If the suggestions in the rest of this blog are too difficult or time consuming for you or your dog and you want a simple way for your dog to use their brain, let them process some novel smells by presenting items they don’t typically get to sniff. This is a great option for dogs who are older, have mobility issues, or recovering from surgery.
Here are a few ideas for novel sniffs:
- The groceries while you pull them out of the bags and put them away
- Non-toxic house plants they may have never even noticed when you pull them down for watering
- Dirty laundry while you separate or put it into the wash
- Items you collected from outside (leaves, sticks, rocks, bones, etc.)
If your dog is okay with the scent of other dogs, you could also trade toys or food puzzles. Although Petey doesn’t want dog friends, I do trade stuffed toys and food puzzles with friends and he is always very interested in the sniffs (and getting a new-to-him toy, obviously).
Effort and Ease
Let’s go back to those criteria we wanted to consider for our indoor projects and adventures:
- What activities does your dog really like to engage in? This gives you an idea of how to set up an indoor adventure that includes things they want to do. Think about:
- How they move their bodies during their favorite activities
- What they like to sniff or track
- Textures or tactile experiences they are attracted to
- What do you observe your dog doing after those activities? Here we are also thinking about your objective for the indoor adventure. You might want them to: get the zoomies out, or settle and rest, or relax in their safe space. You’ll focus on activities that you have observed give you those results.
- How much effort on your part do the activities require? Think about:
- How much time do you have to devote to setup and cleanup?
- How much time do you actually have for the adventure?
- What is your mental and physical bandwidth for this adventure?
Now you can compare the amount of effort you put into the adventure or activity with how effective it is. Think of it as deciding the return on investment. The activities can fall into the following categories:
- High effectiveness, high effort
- High effectiveness, low effort
- Low effectiveness, high effort
- Low effectiveness, low effort
Let’s see what this might look like with an actual example!
Example: Petey's Big Adventure
Here’s an example with my dude Pete. If you remember back to the beginning of the blog, I would like to see a reduction in the frequency, intensity, and duration of Petey barking at Big Man. Thanks to my Powers of Observation, I know that the following activities can help Petey settle and rest, BUT this depends on what else has been going on in his life.
For example, cuddling on the couch with a dog who is sensitive to touch and movement may help him settle and rest, but if he hasn’t had his other needs for physical activity and using his big, beautiful brain, it’s more effort than it’s worth for both of us. This is because I know he’ll be more sensitive, which means I have to think about how I am moving. This is a lot of effort on my part!
The following list of activities are things Petey enjoys doing that I know help him settle and rest. Here’s where they rank on effectiveness vs. effort:
- High effectiveness, high effort:
- Adventure Mode Find It w/ destructables
- Large freework project
- Obstacle course for movement
- High effectiveness, low effort:
- Off-road Mode Find It, no destructables
- Low effectiveness, high effort:
- Cuddle time w/ me
- Low effectiveness, low effort:
- Safe space w/ music
- Sniffing the groceries
Back to that very cold day in December when I knew Petey could use some woods time but could not go outside (wow, remember that all the way back in the intro?): I had time that evening to set up an obstacle course in the basement with our FitPaws equipment. When I got Petey into his warmup of weaving around the cones, I saw he was into working with me. So I also included some care with consent nail trim work, some scratch board, some hind foot awareness work (backing up onto the FitPaws disc), along with climbing around on the inflatable FitPaws balls for core engagement. We had a lot of fun together! Big Man was actually out of town that evening, so Petey also got to bunk with me for the night, so I know he slept quite well. When Big Man returned the next day, I saw a reduction in the frequency, intensity, and duration of Petey’s barking. High effectiveness, high effort, and worth every second.
Here’s to harmony,
Tiffany
Now What?
What are your dog’s favorite things to do outside? Break down the sensory experiences and see how you can reproduce them indoors for the days you can’t get outside. Here are some ideas:
- Smell – Sniffing areas where other dogs have been – Trade a dog toy with a friend
- Sight – Watching birds – Watch bird videos on TV
- Touch – Walking on different textures – Set up pillows, blankets, and other household items and lure your dog around to step on different surfaces
- Sound – Squeaking chipmunks – Squeaky toys
- Taste – Munching on some grass – Veggies with dinner
Put it all together and you’ve got outdoor vibes when you need to stay inside.
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