Mental exercise vs. Physical exercise

Have you ever taken your dog for a walk just to come home and have them full of energy again?

As a human being we are not designed to need physical exercise to the extent to keep us happy. Dog’s where designed to walk all day every day. Sniff all trees, dig in the dirt, chase and hunt their meals.

Then we take them from the life of roaming and stick them into 4 walls of concrete with nothing but the television to watch. We try to play with them in the back yard, throw the ball or Frisbee, maybe even take them for a walk around town. Most times dogs never get to jut RUN! Stretch their legs till they are so tired fall asleep on their feet.

What about the rainy days, or really cold days and you can’t get your dog outside? They are tearing the house apart, bouncing off the walls literally, barking non stop at every one that passes by the window, then how do you burn that extra energy?

What is mental stimulation?

Mental stimulation is as tiring to a dog as physical. With mental stimulation you are making your dog think about doing behaviors they are asked to do. There is a lot of mental exercise you can do with your dog on a daily basis or reserve the extra hard stuff for those rainy indoor days.

Types of mental stimulation

Here are some tips to work with your dog on mental stimulation:

1) Instead of feeding your dog from their dish have the, eat from a puzzle feeder. This makes them figure out how to get their food in return it drains their energy.

2) Another training activity you can do with your dog’s food is instead of feeding them from their dish, take their kibble and hand feed it to them threw a training session. This helps build a relationship between you and your dog.

3) Another fun exercise is teaching your dog that they have 4 feet and they can move them all individually.

4) Simple body awareness.

5) last but not least teach your dog how to be calm in all situations. This is hard on a dog to learn to be calm even with bottled up energy.

Those are 5 tip on how to do incorporate mental stimulation into your dog’s every day life or just on those days life gets in the way.

The answer to the question “who has the best well trained dog in the work”. It’s simple a homeless person! Why you may ask because their dogs are with them all day, they walk for Great Amount of time each day, the dog is never on a leash and has free access to use their nose at liberty and mentally stimulated.

Think bout it!