Play Fun Food Games with Your Dog

Playing with your dog is good for many reasons -

1. Bonding - Dog play allows you to engage in a joint activity with your dog. In particular, you teach your dog certain skills, or work together with him to achieve common goals. This helps significantly in the bonding process.
2. Pack leadership - While playing with your dog, it is important that you are always in control of the game. Set up some rules for the game and teach your dog to follow those rules. This ensures that you will always be safe, and that your dog will not develop bad habits from his dog play sessions. Rules and structure will also put you in the leadership position and help establish you as the pack leader.
3. Positive outlets for hyper energy - Setting up regular dog play sessions will also help redirect your dog's hyper energy into positive areas. This lowers the likelihood of your dog becoming frustrated, or finding games to play on his own that may not be people or property friendly.
4. Dog obedience training - Dog play also presents a great opportunity to obedience train your dog. Have frequent breaks during the play sessions so that your dog does not get overly excited and loses control. Break-time is a great time to slip in some obedience training commands.
5. Fun for everyone - Playing with your dog is fun for everyone. If you do it right, your dog will have a blast and so will you. Keep dog play sessions short, interesting, and rewarding. Be creative and experiment with a variety of dog games. Stop playing before your dog gets bored, so that he will always want more.

Food games are especially fun to play with a dog because food is a strong motivator for most dogs. Instead of giving your dog all of his food in his silver bowl, keep some to use during your dog play sessions.

It is always strange to me why some people are against using food during play and training, and instead believe that giving their dog free food is better. Giving free food to a dog doesn't teach him anything except that food is easy to come by, and he doesn't have to do anything to get his food.

On the other hand, using food during play and obedience training teaches the dog that -

• Food is not free.
• Food comes from you.
• Food is a reward for doing work for you.
• Working together with you is a good thing because it results in a fun and rewarding play session.

One of my dog's most favorite games to play is the Find-It game.

I start by playing this game in my enclosed backyard.

• First, I call my dog to me and reward her for coming.
• Next, I show her that I have a small but tasty treat in hand. This usually gets her undivided attention.
• Then, I say "Find-It" and throw the treat a very short distance away and in clear sight.
• The motion naturally catches my dog's eye and she pounces on the treat.
• I mark that behavior (Good!), praise her, and reward her with another treat.

Once my dog gets familiar with the game, I stop rewarding her for finding the treat. I also start throwing the Find-It treat farther away, and make it more challenging for her by throwing it into long grass, holes, or under bushes.

The Find-It game is also fun to play while out on a walk. My Siberian Husky loves going on walks and when it comes time to go home, she will usually want to linger behind. This is usually when I start playing the Find-It game with her to get her moving together with me in a homeward direction.

Most dogs love this game because it is rewarding and they get to practice their instinct to smell and search for food. As such, it can also be useful to motivate and distract dogs who are anxious about going outside.

My other dog, a Shiba Inu can be very lazy when it comes to working for his food. Often, he will lie about and wait until my Siberian has finished working on a food toy, and come clean up what she has left behind.

However, the "Buried Treasure" game always gets him going on his own.

• I start by getting all of his toys together in a corner of the room.
• Then I put little bits of kibble in some of the toys and bury them under other toys.
• In the end, I have a pile of toys, some of which have buried kibble.
• To top everything off I sprinkle some kibble down at the pile of toys and let it trickle down to the bottom of the pile.

My Shiba Inu has a lot of fun finding all the buried kibble while digging through his pile of toys.

Of course you can also bury toys in a sand-box or in holes in your backyard and let your dogs dig them out. This game is great for teaching your dogs which backyard areas are sanctioned excavation points, and which areas are off limits.

If you do not have a sand box, then another fun variation of the game is to hide food toys in various locations around the backyard or house. Start by hiding the toys in easier to find places and let your dog see where you are putting the stuff. Once he understands the game, you can increase the level of challenge by putting your dog is in a separate location while you hide his toys. You can also start to put the toys in harder to look for places, as long as it is safe for your dog.

For more advanced hide-and-seekers, you can even set up an agility course that the dog must conquer in order to find all the food.

Only do this after the dog is already trained and comfortable with each of the agility obstacles.

Finally, a great way to play with your dog is by putting his food into interactive food toys. In this way, he has to exercise his mind and figure out the toy puzzles before he can get to his food.

There are a fair number of interactive toys that my dogs really enjoy. The toys are fun, keeps them occupied, and gives them something interesting to work on.

In addition to ready-made interactive food toys, I always try to figure out new ways to create food puzzle games for my dogs.

For example, during Halloween, I tried a chicken bobbing game (a variation to the apple bobbing game). I filled a container with water and placed little pieces of chicken under the water. Then I let my Siberian bob for the pieces of chicken. She had a lot of fun and it is also a great way to cool down.

My dogs also love tearing apart cardboard boxes to get at the food inside.

Sometimes, I may also combine multiple interactive toys together to change the food puzzle and increase the challenge of getting out the food.

Always supervise your dog when trying out a new interactive toy. Make sure they do not swallow anything that may be unhealthy, a choking hazard, or may disrupt their digestive system.

There are many other fun ways to play with your dog and keep him happy and well exercised. Some of my dogs' favorite activities include dog walking, playing with other dogs, and obedience training.

Try to always keep dog play fun, upbeat, and rewarding. This will make everyone happy, and enhance your relationship with your dog.

A busy, and tired dog, is a well-behaved, relaxed, and fun companion!

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