#dog - #Looking for new games to play with my dog

Looking for new games to play with my dog

Husky/Shep mix, around 9 years old (guesstimate based on her dental wear and tear). She is lazy, we go for 1-2+ hour walks every day, but unless I interact with her she does absolutely nothing, although more and more she is showing signs of restlessness, even with the walks. Feel like I need to tell her story before I continue my questions.

She was a hoarding dog for a while, no idea how long, before we found each other. She is rather lazy and was heart-worm positive. While on the treatment she went from 20lb's underweight to 17lb's over weight. Lowest 55lbs, highest 87lbs. At last weight-in she was down to 79lbs with another 9-10lbs to lose. My fault, as I didn't think about cutting her food back from what the bag said to feed her while on her heart-worm treatment and I also didn't know how slow her metabolism actually was at the time. For the last year and a half she has been eating 550-600 calories from her food, with another 100-200 from treats/bones/games/etc.

Keep in mind with the below statements, in the last couple of months she has been changing a lot. Be it because of the weight loss or the fact I have her at the dog park/around other dogs more often, or both I don't care. She is trying to play with other dogs, even going so far as to try and run with them but she can't keep up so she gives up fast. That and she doesn't like going more than a few feet away from me unless she is so preoccupied she doesn't realize how far she is.

She doesn't play with toys, I have tried associating them with food. She has this aversion to putting anything not food in her mouth. I have been working on this a bit with frozen kongs and had my first break through here the other day with a food ball where she finally picked it up to take it to her bed. She has never put a ball in her mouth, usually sniffs and walks away, this included food balls in the past. So I plan to encourage this new behavior.

We play sniffing games every day but even these I think she is growing bored of. I have run out of ways to keep this challenging for her. I used to double up treats so she had to backtrack to find everything, she has caught on. I fold into blankets, crevices she has to open, window sills, etc. She knows all the hiding spots and really doesn't sniff them out anymore, unless its in a blanket. Even then she doesn't really seem like she is having to try anymore.

I have tried playing the pick which hand and/or hiding in a cup. She doesn't seem to enjoy either of these, getting bored after only a round or two.

My question is as follows. What other games can we play? She won't do anything that makes her have to work to hard for something. Example treat puzzles or those wobbly things. She understands she has to move the toy to get a treat to fall out but won't put the effort in to get it to work.

Trick training is really nice, she has come a long ways there as well but kinda run out of tricks to try and teach her. She knows your basics, sit, lay, rollover, shake, other shake, backup, look left, look right, bang (play deadish, still learning), come, go here, look at me, climb/jump (taught her to help work on her back hips, do a couple a day), ring bell (although she won't do this from far away, only if I am close.) The main hurdle I am running into, is she won't do anything short of stay/wait that requires her to look away/move away from the treat or the person with the treat. I use wait/stay out at the park as a way to get her to run. Ill have her sit, wait, then walk a good distance from her, then tell her to come. She does her lumbering run all the while with this great big smile on her face. I can usually do this 2 maybe 3 times until she doesn't run anymore and instead walks fast, either because she doesn't want to or can't because of her hips and/or weight. I try not to push it to far but she definitely isn't out of breath.

My question is as follows. What other games can we play? Need something fun but not to workload heavy as she just walks away. Not afraid to try something new or revisit old activities with her recent changes. Just drawing a blank on what to do. I am looking into seeing how she will do at camp bow wow soon. If they accept her I think it would be great for her socializing experiences. She has come a long ways since I started working with her but I can't get her to the park/around other dogs often/long enough for her to really push herself in this regard. On the flip side I don't know if they will accept her or not as she does whine a lot when I am not around if she is at someone elses house and as I said doesn't like to be more than a few feet from me when at parks/walking since she knows ill cut other dogs off for her when she gets overwhelmed.

Submitted January 21, 2019 at 12:56PM by Charred01
via reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/DOG/comments/aie0n3/looking_for_new_games_to_play_with_my_dog/?utm_source=ifttt