Keeping Your Dog Active During the Holidays

The holidays are a crazy (but fun) time for everybody.  With the cold weather, family dinners, and guests coming over, the dog can often get neglected.  Here are a  few quick ways that you can keep your dog mentally active everyday:

• Practice down stays while baking cookies.  Build up your dog's down-stay so that he or she can eventually stay for the whole time the cookies are in the oven.

• Build a mini agility course in your house to show off your dog's awesome agility skills to guests.  Jump over the broom propped on chairs, crawl under the piano bench, go around a chair, jump through a hula hoop and pause on the ottoman.  Just make sure you have enough room for your dog to land on the jumps.
• Work on their contact spots by having them "go all the way" up or down the stairs.  Remember that the skill you are focusing on is not leaping off before the last stair (Cheri was infamous for this).  So, encourage them to go to the last stair, then reward them once they hit the last stair, just like you would when they hit the contact zone on the dog walk.
• Practice positive greetings with guests.  Have your dog greet each guest by sitting.  Once sitting, he or she gets attention from the guests.  If the dog gets up, no more attention.  This will quickly teach your dog that sitting gets attention.  If your dog is shy, have guests offer tasty treats to help socialize him or her.
• Build those problem solving skills.  Involve the kids and the dogs in hide and seek.  Have one child hide with a tasty treat.  Turn the dog loose and have the child call the dog's name.  Once Fido finds the child, he gets a tasty treat.  Repeat and increase difficulty as your dog becomes more proficient.  Having guests over or taking your dog to a different place are great times to work on generalizing their obedience skills.  Find a canine-savvy guest to give commands to your dog.  Make sure the dog gets a reward every time they perform a task for a new person.  Also, make sure the new "handler" knows all the right commands and that you are supervising.  At a new place, go through a 2-3 minute obedience routine (sit, down, stay, etc.) in different rooms of the house.  Doing these activities will help your dog learn that no matter the location or person, he or she still needs to perform the behavior when the command is given.

• Utilize the crate.  Many people think crating is a punishment, but it is definitely not.  Read this previous blog to see why crating is useful: A Dog's Crate is His Castle. Keeping your dog crate trained takes practice and there is no better time to work on crating skills than when the holidays are around.  Don't feel guilty about putting Fido in there-he may even feel it's a sanctuary away from screaming kids, too many people, and the temptations of all those chocolate goodies and the Christmas tree water.