What does your dog do all day?

[Coriander71]

As a relatively new dog owner, I’m genuinely interested to know - it’s not something I thought about before. I - naively, I now realise - thought that if we gave our dog a couple of good walks a day, always had someone around the house to keep him company and provided a variety of squeaky, chewy toys, then that would make him pretty happy. Although this obviously fills some of the time, I still feel guilty when I’m trying to get some work done (I work from home) and Dastardly is whimpering and looking reproachful. But even when I do give in and try and play I’m not even sure what he wants me to do - I throw a ball and he looks at me like I’m an idiot.

You may have detected a certain lack of experience so please be gentle with me! Surely you ninja dog owners don’t play with them all day, do you?

We have a whippet and he does mostly sleep. Often he gets up in the morning, visits the garden and then goes upstairs to make use of the residual warmth in the bed. He snoozes off and on all day but will always attend the "opening of the fridge". At around 3pm he will wake up and sit in the window seat waiting for the dc to come home from school. This is interspersed by barking at squirrels.

If the weather is bad we will collect the Dc in the car from school and Mr Whippet likes to come along for the ride. He loves a car ride.

The evening is a walk, dinner and more snoozing.

Ours is about 3 years old. On a day where we're at home all day:

Walk early morning, breakfast then mostly snooze until lunchtime. Will follow you round though so she's snoozing closest to where you are. If she's awake she's usually chomping on a bone or mithering about in the garden. DH says if he's at home she harangues him to play with her quite a bit but she doesn't do it to me (but then he is her favourite!). The only game she really likes is for us to throw one of her cuddly toys so she can catch it and bring it back. Does not like balls at all!

Lunchtime walk / park trip. More snoozing / bone chomping etc. Tea time. Another walk. More snoozing - evenings she gets quite cross if we're doing stuff or in separate rooms, she humphs around at us until we give in and all get on the sofa together.

Mine is 14 and he sleeps all day apart from the odd toilet/food break but he perks up in the evening follows everyone about and gets excited for his walk. Later on he moves from his bed to the couch for a cuddle/snooze. He still gets up and comes to see me when I come home though not bad for his age

I forgot to add, we also do daily training with ours which helps tire him out. He goes to training class every week and has been going since he was 14 weeks (he's now nearly 8 months old). I go over tricks with him and basic training like sit, recall, walking to heel, and we do that on walks too - either recall between the two of us, or walking to heel on a lead (with treats as bribery).

I find a shorter walk with training tires him out much more than a longer walk with no training. A tired dog is a good, happy dog!

Yes, I’m doing a bit of training every day, and just started training classes to build up repertoire of games and training ideas. It’s reassuring to read all these replies, and interesting to see all the variations (though sleep is a strong theme coming through!)

Mine has always slept very little during the day and continues to do so even though he's now very elderly. He much prefers to potter around outdoors, coming in to check on us from time to time, and still needs 2-3 h gentle exercise a day on top of this. He would get bored very quickly shut inside the house and lying around all day. He likes a lot of mental stimulation.