Dogs, Cats, Humans, yes everybody gets bored sometimes, and just like us, they need mental stimulation too to avoid getting bored. Boredom in your dog can lead to him misbehaving, biting, and destroying things around the house. Mental stimulation for your dog is about just as important as taking him for walks in the parks.
In this article, we will be focusing on a few of the most useful tips that we think helps the most, keeping the dog mentally stimulated.
- Running errands with your dog
- Give your dog tasks to do
- Buy your dog new toys
- Teach your dog new tricks
- Play mind games with your dog
- Present your dog to new faces
Run Errands with your dog.
Even if you just went to the park, but you also need to pick up a package at the post office, bring your dog with you. It may be an ordinary thing for you, but for your dog, it’s a whole new experience and something exciting.
Getting used to bringing your dog everywhere you go is suitable for both you and your dog. It will make your dog happier, because of all the small adventures and exploring you’re taking your dog on. It could potentially also make you more comfortable, because of all the people who want to pet your dog, that will allow you to make new acquaintances.
Give your dog tasks to do
Certain dogs are bred to naturally want to go hunting, dig holes, or even herding. Depriving them of these duties can lead to boredom. Of course, you’re not expected to take your dog hunting or to buy a sheep farm so he can herd. But you can give him other duties such as taking him with you to ball games and allow him to play with you. Take him to the beach and let him dig his way to China.
Dogs need that kind of activity. So next time you’re playing Tennis consider bringing your furry teammate.
Buy your dog some new toys.
Playing with the same toy every day can get boring, as you can imagine. That’s also the case for your dog. Besides being fatiguing, it also can get filthy, very quickly. Any toy continually going from being in your dogs mount to be dropped on the floor will.
Therefore you should replace his toys regularly. True, sometimes he loves a toy and keeps walking around with it, showing it off to everybody proudly (only showing no touching). Even though he has that one favorite toy keep replacing some of his other ones so he can always rotate at ease.
One good suggestion that worked for our dog is to have a dog closet filled with toys, and every few days rotate out his toys, so he never plays with the same toy for too long. For your dog, it’s the same thing as getting a new toy.
If you ever find yourself in need of dog toys, you can find our recommended products here.
Teach your dog new tricks
This one is pretty self-explanatory but still deserves to be spoken about because of how important it can be never to stop teaching your dog new tricks. It’s always a mental stimulation for your dog to understand and learn what he needs to do, and the results are both rewarding for you and your dog.
Try to find the time to teach your dog tricks and commands once a week.
You could always impress your friends later on when you show them how good your dog is at walking on two legs.
Play mind games with your dog
There’s a lot of different mentally challenging games you can do with your dog. One of the more common ones is likely to be this type of mental stimulation toy you can get for your dog. You put a treat inside, then you close it and give it to your dog to figure out how to open it.
These kinds of toys can be beneficial, they can keep your dog busy for hours!
They are great at keeping your dogs morale high and teach him how to think differently, alternatively making your dog smarter.
If you need mental stimulation dog toys, go to this link for some of our recommendations.
Introduce your dog to new people and pets
Every time you introduce a new person or a new pet to your dog, it is a thrilling experience for him: a Brand new butt to smell and a whole lot of other beautiful scents.
A great place to do that is to take him to the dog park. He will often meet and play with new dogs or get petted by strangers.
So there you have it, as you can tell. The best way to avoid having a misbehaving dog, aka; Bad dog, is to introduce him to out of the ordinary places and introduce him to new faces.
More often than not, your dog is just like you when it comes to getting bored, doing the same thing too much is also boring for a dog.
For more information on how to train an aggressive dog, you could read this article:
