How does your dog fill it’s time?

[MissShapesMissStakes]

I’m new to dog ownership. We have a miniature poodle, 8 months old.

He’s lovely. He adores my kids and loves to play with them. Or mooch about in the garden with them.

We walk him a couple of times a day, one for at least an hour. One for half an hour to focus on walking on the lead.

Someone is pretty much always home with him. We live with my parents and I work from home and my kids don’t go to school.

But when he’s not got a playmate or isn’t on a walk. He just looks so bored! He might follow me around for a bit while I do some jobs. Or wander about constantly asking to go out/come in while I’m working on the computer in the kitchen.

He can’t be entertained all the time. Sometimes the kids want to play on their iPads, I have work to do etc. He will sleep for a bit of that. But then he just wanders around looking bored and giving me those puppy eyes to give him food or go and play with him.

What do your dogs do if you’re in but not able to entertain a four legged teenage-attidude-d dog? It’s not like he can grab a deck of cards and play solitaire!

I think you are over walking a significant that age. Try brain exercises to treat him out and lucky/chewy stuff to calm down.

Mine has a treat ball which I use when I need so time out, it makes stupid annoying noises but it’s also hard to get the treats out of. He can spend an hour chasing it around the floor trying. Other than that he’s a puppy so wants constant attention, now asleep at my feet a happy and good boy :)

Ours is a pup too.
He would really like us to entertain him 24/7 and if we can’t entertain him he would like to be near/next/on us
We normally have a walk, do some training, play games like hide and seek and he has things like a snuffle mat. The longest ‘break’ we get is if he has something like a pigs ear which he will happily chew away on. If he isint doing that he plays at being our shadow

Ours sleeps. Almost all day. He shows little to no excitement when it’s time for a walk. In fact I often have to force him off the sofa to get his lead on. When he’s out he loves it and runs around like a lunatic after anything that moves. When we get back in he consumes an entire bowl of water and goes straight back to one of his four favourite sleeping places (none of which are his bed which is clearly for night time use only). Despite the entire bowl of water he’s consumed he can easily wait 4-5 hours before he needs a pee.
When he was a puppy it was a whole different story.... they grown out of it but really do need to learn to be alone - I wish I’d trained that before I taught him even to sit!

Our miniature poodle is now 14 months and has calmed down a lot. It took her ages to get into the antlers but now she’ll chew them. Big raw bones are even better. I hate to admit it but once we relented and let her sleep in the sofa she started sleeping more in the day. If we didn’t let her burn off energy off the lead I think she’s be a nightmare.

She likes walks and playing with other dogs at the dog park. But mainly she likes to do this:

Coriander my dog does exactly the same with her yak's milk chew. She doesn't seem to know what to do with it so just carries it around or hides it in different places. It actually seems to stress her out a bit.

I have a greyhound - it's bone idle, and just loves to sleep. It has to be cajoled into going out!

Sitting by the window or sitting in the garden, being naughty in the garden trying to break into all the fenced off for their own protection areas, plotting what to steal( mainly socks and knickers) and then executing it, sleeping, waking up to find a new spot to sleep in, playing tug of war and fetch, dragging their beds around the house and sleeping, spreading ALL their toys all over the house repeatedly, trying to break into the utility room where their food is kept.................basically being busy up to no good or sleeping

My Labs daily routine:
Snoozle
Breakfast
Walk
Snoozle
Bark at postman
Snoozle
After lunch walk
Annoy me a bit by wanting in and out garden
Snoozle
Dinner
Snoozle
Daddy's home! Tummy rub and ear scratch.
Snoozle

What a life!

When she's not sleeping she does cross-stitch. She tried knitting but her leg joints all bend the wrong way at the wrong place and the needles kept slipping from her paws.

She sleeps a lot.