Ideas for exercising puppy indoors!

[CrapDogOwner]

Help!

DPuppy is under house arrest for 2 weeks, having somehow contracted kennel cough. How do I exercise her indoors/ in a 3X3m back yard?

So far I've come up with:

• sniffle trails in the back yard - hide smelly treats under flower pots and let her sniff them out.
• work on training indoors - e.g. recall with two of us either ends of the sitting room.
• other training exercises
• swapping toys to keep them novel (may have to stock up on more)

How do I stop her (and us) climbing the walls in the next 2 weeks? She's 14 weeks old, and a lab/cocker cross so normally very lively (and not much less so while ill, thank goodness!) Any ideas VERY gratefully received.

Hide and seek. One of you run off and hide where you are not visible, call her, give her a treat when she finds you.

Two weeks can seem a long time with a dog who can't go out for a walk. Good luck.

Thanks! Definitely one to try.

I feel for you. My last pup was in quarantine at home until he was 20 weeks old, which was 10 weeks for us!

Have a look on the facebook group Beyond the Bowl. There are lots of good ideas on there.

Snuffle mats, kongs and kong wobblers, scatter feeding, Lickimats, loo roll inner parcels hidden around the house, teatowel rolls and/or knots - frozen first if she’s chewy. Hiding toys in the bottom of boxes or tubs filled with scrunched up paper (don’t use the paper from deliveries at the moment though, as some of it is being disinfected before despatch).

Target training is a useful tool and any sort of training that gets her brain going, shaping behaviours and teaching things like ‘tidy your toys away’ will wear her out.

As well as all the brain training ideas, use the time to condition her to being handled and remaining calm eg, grooming, claw clipping/grinding, teeth brushing, etc. Lickimats are useful for this and also generally as way of keeping them busy but calm, as the licking itself is relaxing for them.

You can get some socialisation in, by holding her or sitting with her where she can see out and rewarding her for calmly watching people, dogs, cars, trucks etc going past your house and people walking up to your door and knocking/ringing the bell etc.

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With those breeds, early retrieve training - lots of videos on YouTube about it.

Heel walking on and off lead. Use lots of bribery and corruption.

Sit-stay - surprisingly good at wearing them out, the concentration needed is immense.

Thanks - loads of great ideas.

I'll definitely look up retrieve videos (we've got some of the basics, but there's a long way to go yet) and sit-stay sounds like an excellent idea. Will also look into lickimats.

I`m not sure if you do it already, but I teach all of my dogs and fosters silent commands as well as voice commands. Its great if you loose your voice when you have a cold and also comes in very useful should your dog go deaf, hopefully not but you never know sadly.

Its very easy to teach hand signals, you just start doing it with the voice command, and the gradually phase out the voice and do it silently.

Thanks - a friend showed me some of the hand signals she uses. They seem like a really good idea both for the reasons you give and to maintain eye contact with DDog.

Thought I could amuse everyone with the contrast between carefully staged doggy blog photos and the reality.

Blog suggestion - a version of the shell game with smelly treat under one plastic cup, shuffle the cups, let dog sniff out treat. Blog photo - golden retriever sitting perfectly, looking very intelligent and watching intently as owner shuffles pots.

Reality - iver-excited DPup dives in scattering treat and cups to the four winds, eats treat, then eats cup, then watches safe in the knowledge that the Human is now safely entertained for the next 5 minutes picking tiny fragments of plastic out the carpet. You can even join in and "help" if you think DHuman is beginning to look bored.

Lots of agility-type foundation training can be done inside and is great for developing balance etc plus general “learning to learn”.
Eg wobble board - no need to buy one, just find some sort of board (I used a child’s whiteboard with a rubber bath mat taped to it). Click and treat for looking at it. Then for putting a paw on, then 2 paws, then standing on it. Then balance the board on the flattest cushion you have. Repeat above steps.
Similarly standing 2 paws on any step or box, first front paws then back paws.

Also “middle” - go between your legs and lie down (fab for when you want to keep them out of the way of other dogs etc out and about).

Loads of other ideas on YouTube - Google agility foundations. You might not want to do any agility but all the stuff is good for tiring brains out as well as good for physical development

We throw a toy up the stairs. Our dog loves it.