Training Articles - Games to play with your dog

by Alex Johnson

With these games I have suggested using food, and regular dried dog food from your hound’s daily allowance will usually work well - but ensure her meals are adjusted to take this into account – a slim dog is a happy, healthy dog. If your hound enjoys toys you can use them as well/instead.

All of these games also serve a practical purpose in either reinforcing recall commands, stretching a bored dogs brain cells or for outdoor entertainment to keep the hound interested in you and so to help prevent ‘wandering off’

Probably the easiest is indoor ‘find the biscuit’, which for most dogs is something they are probably already good at!
With your dog on the lead, put a biscuit in plain view somewhere in the room then call your dog’s name and gently persuade her (no doubt kicking and screaming to start with) out of the door and along the hall until she looks back at you. Reward her attention by telling her to ‘find it’ while letting go of the lead. After a few tries you can progress to calling her out of the room, closing the door and hiding the biscuit in increasingly difficult places before asking her to ‘find it’ (easy places are at hound’s head height, harder ones are behind cushions and the hardest one ever is above a warm radiator as the scent will rise up into the room over her head!) Eventually she’ll twig she can follow your scent trail across the room so you’ll need to wander around a bit after placing it to make it harder. Gentle encouragement is fine but try to resist helping too much or she’ll learn to rely on you instead of using her nose. Multiple dog households will have to endure an orderly queue outside the door and wait their turn!

Once she’s understood the ‘find it’ cue indoors you can play the same game outdoors. Again start on the lead and place the biscuit on the ground in plain view. Call her away and wait until she looks at you before asking her to ‘find it’ and follow her back to get it. Once she understands you can drop/throw the biscuit unseen, call for her attention, and then send her to ‘find it’ Again, help her only the first few times. Make it harder by throwing it into longer grass so she really has to use her nose.
If you hound is the ‘on lead only’ type then you can play this on a flexi-lead by throwing a biscuit out (obviously not quite as far as the length of the lead to avoid sudden neck jerks!) and while she looks for that one you can throw another out unseen in the opposite direction. Call her once she is crunching the first biscuit, and then when she reaches you reward her by sending her off to find the next one.

If you have an ‘off lead hound’ or a large garden/enclosed field you can play my all time favourite dog game the ‘long send back’. It is again best to start this off on lead so as to keep control at the beginning. Place a biscuit on the ground next to a clear marker (I push a stick into the ground or leave a large stone on the path - I suspect other dog walkers must wonder what these strange objects are all about! Obviously you won’t need a marker if you are using a toy) Call your dog away and then send her for the biscuit once she is focussed back on you. Run back with her and once she has eaten the biscuit call her back to you again for another one. This second treat is crucial, as you need her to turn immediately to return to you once you remove the lead and start to put in some distance! With a bit of time she will learn to walk away from the biscuit off lead but at heel with you until you send her back. Gradually build up the distance - you should eventually be able to send her back a good few hundred metres once she understands the game. It will give her a chance for a really good sprint whilst remaining pretty much under control. Don’t forget to call enthusiastically as she rushes back for her second treat and so help reinforce a speedy recall. The real bonus of this game is since you have already walked over the bit of path she is to run on you can check for distractions (chip wrappers, dead hedgehogs etc) along the way!

If you have more than one hound they can all take it in turns, or, if they fetch toys you can put the toys about 2m apart along the path and send the next one straight after the first comes back.

It may not all be plain sailing though: I once put down a piece of ham whilst playing this game and while the dog was speeding back to retrieve it a cat popped out of the bushes and ate the ham – the look on the dog’s face was priceless!