Ten Winter Activities for You and Your Dog
When it’s windy and cold outside, my dogs are almost as hesitant as I am to go and play outside. Almost. Well actually, they’d probably drag me to the park if it was up to them, but sometimes I must refuse.
It’s frustrating when days can go by and the dogs haven’t had their daily fix of romping exercise with other dogs. What can a dog owner do on those days to keep their dogs from tearing up the house with pent-up energy?
The following is a list of activities that you can do with your dogs during the winter months to keep them in top shape and happy:
1. Find a local dog meetup. Many of these groups will meet indoors at a local dog daycare where dogs can run and romp together and nobody has to stand around outside.
2. Visit your dog friendly friends. Taking your dog to someone else’s house can be enough to break up the monotonous routine of their day. Even better, visit a friend that has dogs and let the dogs play together in the yard, or even in the house.
3. Join a flyball team. Flyball is a sport for dogs and their owners where the dogs run a race, jumping over jumps to catch a ball at the end. Flyball teams are always hoping to find small dogs to compete as the height of the jumps are set by the smallest member of the team. This sport is often played indoors so it’s great for the winter.
4. Take your dog to the pet store. Whenever you run off to get that new bag of food or pick up some treats, load those dogs into the car and take them with you! Going for a ride, sniffing out a new place, and meeting other dogs can be an exciting outing!
5. Visit your local dog daycare. We run a dog daycare from our home where dogs come to play with us, and often stay overnight. There are also larger commercial dog daycares run in buildings with big playrooms for the dogs. You can use dog daycares to ensure your dog gets enough socialization, exercise, and entertainment. Some daycares are now setting up indoor dog parks, so look for one in your city.
6. Teach your dog some more tricks. A training session can involve lots of laying down, jumping up, spinning around, and more. You can use a training session to give your dog some entertainment and mild exercise.
7. Play hide and seek. Lots of dogs enjoy a good game of hide and seek where they have to find you, or find a toy that you’ve hidden. We will tell Anna to wait, and let her sit in the livingroom while we go off and hide a toy somewhere. Then when we say “okay!”, she knows it’s time to go find her toy. We had to make things very easy the first few times we played, but as she caught on, we had to make things harder and harder. I know a woman with a border collie that LOVES this game, but she has to go down into her basement and hide the ball in the sleeve of a coat or buried in things, because he’s so good at finding it!
8. Dance. There are people who participate in musical freestyle, a combination of obedience and dance. If you can train your dog a few basic moves, you could be dancing together in no time!
9. Get down and wrestle. My big dog Anna has always really liked it when I get down on the floor with her to play. Her tail wags like crazy if I push her down onto her back and sniff at her ears and face. She used to be a little rambunctious for play like this, but now that she’s older, she’s pretty gentle with me. I get just as much exercise as she does when we wrestle!
10. Blow bubbles. One summer we discovered that Anna just loved chasing bubbles. If you have a room in your house where it won’t cause problems to get some soap on the floor, mix up yourself a batch of bubbles, find a bubble wand, and start blowing. Anna goes wild snapping and catching them in her mouth. It’s really fun!
