7 easy enrichment games to entertain your dog at home

Just like people, dogs get bored. If your dog spends most of their day at home with nothing to do, it’s not gonna be a surprise when they’re begging for your attention, destroying your furniture and bouncing off the walls. Walks are great for physical exercise and to give your dog a chance to sniff and explore beyond your four walls. But for most dogs, their walks are less than 2 hours a day. And that’s not everyday. Sometimes you or your dog are injured, the weather’s too bad to walk them or you’ve got a super busy day and they’ll have to have a shorter walk.

Luckily there are plenty of easy games your dog can play at home to keep them entertained. Some you can play with your dog to build your bond and have fun together. But others you prepare for your dog and leave them to occupy themselves - brilliant for when you’re eating, busy with work or just want to relax and watch TV. Don’t worry - your dog doesn’t need to spend every waking hour at home busy with these enrichment games. For most dogs 10-20 minutes a day is enough to tire out their brain and stop them feeling bored.

1. Hullaba-loo rolls

Dogs love to rip and shred. Which can become pretty expensive when they’re destroying their toys and very annoying when they’re destroying your cushions or sofa. If your dog enjoys shredding, they’ll always find something to rip apart - whether you want them to or not. So save your sanity and your wallet by giving them things to shred that cost nothing.

We all go to the toilet. So we all have plenty of those cardboard tubes inside toilet rolls. Which makes them the perfect enrichment game. Save up your toilet roll inners until you have around 5 or 6. Fold up one end of all of them and fill them with treats, kibbles and chews (whatever your dog likes to eat). Fold over the other end of most of them, leaving a couple open to make it easy for your dog the first time.

2. Pass the parcel

This game is very similar to the children’s party game. Wrap treats and kibble in layers of paper for your dog to rip apart and eat. If you regularly buy newspapers or magazines this is a great use for those once you’re done reading (make sure you take out any staples). Or you can use paper packing from parcels.

Lay as many sheets as you want (I’d recommend at least 4) down. I like to put a larger chew in the middle layer to give dogs a bigger reward, but you don’t have to. Scrunch the first sheet around the chew or treats, then scatter treats and kibble on the next sheet and scrunch that around the first sheet. Keep repeating this until you’ve used up all your paper.

3. Destruction box

Another thing most of us have is cardboard boxes from deliveries. And these make excellent enrichment too. Scatter treats and kibble at the bottom. Then cover with layers of paper and more kibble. If you want you can add in a toy (new or old) wrapped in paper or parcels of treats or chews wrapped in paper or cardboard to give your dog more variety. Destruction boxes can entertain your dog for longer and are easily prepared in advance. So they’re a good thing to give your dog to keep them occupied when you’ve got visitors coming or while you’re watching your favourite TV show.

4. Find it

Unlike people, dogs are ruled by their noses. Scent is how dogs understand the world so some of the best enrichment encourages them to sniff more. One of the easiest ways to do that is to hide treats around your home. Start by asking your dog to sit and wait (or having someone hold onto their collar if your dog’s impatient), putting a treat in front of them and saying ‘find it’ and encouraging your dog to get the treat. Once your dog understands that ‘find it’ means ‘get the treat’ you can start increasing the distance the treat is from your dog until they need to start sniffing to find it.

Then you can start hiding 2 treats, then 3 treats until you can ask your dog to wait or put them in another room while you hide 10-20 treats. Then release your dog to hunt for the treats by saying ‘find it’. Sniffing is exhausting so do this a couple of times and your dog will be ready for a nap. You can hide chews for your dog to find so that expensive chew entertains your dog for longer. Or if you want to give your dog a bigger challenge, hide parcels of treats so your dog can hunt for them and then rip them apart to get their snacks.

5. Snuffle box

When your dog sniffs the ground on walks they’re taking in so much information. They know which dogs, people and wildlife have been in the area recently just from the scent they leave behind. Sniffing is like watching the news (or scrolling social media) for your dog. And you can give them that entertainment at home too. Which is great if your dog is on restricted exercise or the weather is too bad for a long walk.

Just go out and collect some leaves, grass and sticks from places you commonly walk. You might want to wear gloves to do this… Put them in an airtight box or plastic bag to keep the scent in. When you get home, put what you’ve found in a small cardboard box and let your dog sniff away to find out what news you’ve brought home.

6. Play tug

Play is one of the best ways to bond with your dog. There are lots of different ways you can play with your dog. But one of the best is tug because your dog gets to chase and ‘kill’ a toy. Dogs (even tiny, fluffy toy breeds) are predators and love play that allows them to practise those predatory behaviours. And no, playing tug won’t make your dog aggressive or encourage them to kill wildlife. If your dog loves to chase animals, tug is an amazing way to reward their recall.

It’s best to play tug with long snake-like toys or massive fluffy toys. You want lots of space for your dog to bite on. If you play with a toy that’s too small your dog might accidentally bite your hand when they’re going for the toy. Keep play sessions really short to stop your dog getting over-excited. Then help them calm down afterwards by letting them chew the toy or giving them a chew. And make sure you let your dog win the toy when you’re playing - no-one likes playing games where they lose all the time.

7. Teach them a trick

Learning something new (and having fun while doing it) is great mental enrichment. While all training should be fun, when we’re teaching our dogs important life skills like recall or loose-lead walking it’s easy to feel the pressure to progress the training quickly. And that pressure can make training stressful for us and our dogs. But trick training is just for fun. It doesn’t matter how long it takes for your dog to learn a new trick so you can both relax and enjoy learning together. And luckily there are so many tricks you can teach your dog that you’ll easily find something that suits their skills and personality. From simple tricks like paw and spin to complex ones like tidying up their toys and walking backwards while bowing there really is a trick for every dog.

Written by Juniper Indigo, dog trainer in Tiverton and Exeter