Need games to keep my dog from getting bored.

[pssorens]

I'm looking for enrichment activities for my dog. Scruffy is a 2 year old Australian Cattle Dog/ Cairn Terrier mix. While I have more than enough room for him to run and we play near constant games of fetch. I wonder if anyone knows some good activites to exercise his brains? he's very smart and I want to keep him from getting bored.

[Kittish]

Maybe design some sort of obstacle course for him to run? Lead him thru it til he gets the idea then have him run it on his own. Or a doggy version of hide and seek, where there are treats hidden, and finding them is its own reward.

[iradney]

What we do with hopper, is throw treats for him (so he runs away) and then we hide from him. It's actually cute how he runs around sniffing for us

[jedimaster91]

Pick up a Buster Cube at your local PetSmart or other pet supply place. You dump kibble in the cube and set the difficulty by twisting the hole in the top. Doggie then knockes the cube around to get the food out. We bought one for our beagle and she loves it.

[bookworm]

As an ACD owner, believe me, I know what you're going through. The main thing with this breed is that they are working dogs and they want a job to do. Every day.

We're lucky that my husband is self-employed and is able to take Rascal with him pretty much everywhere. He asks her if she's ready to go to work, she dashes around til she finds the toy she wants to take and meets him at the door, it's sooooo cute.

We take Rascal to the park/lake at least every other day except when it's really bad out and spend at least an hour throwing the ball/frisbee for her. We do daily as much as possible.

I tried to get her involved in agility, but I think I waited too long to get her started. She is so focused on playing ball that it's almost impossible to get her to do anything else outside.

We do tricks for treats. She loves any kind of dog treat, and we go through her list of tricks (sit, stay, speak, high-five, crawl, etc.) a couple times a day. Actually, we've gotten bad about doing that, because she started anticipating what we were going to have her do. She'll sit, speak, and high-five in rapid order rather than wait for us to tell her which we want. She just wants the treat!

Anyway, the idea is to give your dog a daily "routine" that he needs to do to satisfy that working urge.

[pssorens]

I've been playing hide and seek with my nephew and when it's my turn to seek I just send Scruff to find him. Now that the weather is nicer, he'll tend to want to spend most of the day outside patrolling for vermin such as squirrels, rabbits, birds, lawnmowers , and weedeaters ( hey, it's his list not mine). We are also going to try and do some hiking.

[Kyree]

I have a Pit Bull, and an Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix. I know what you're feeling.

Like Jedimaster said, Buster Cubes are great. Unfortunately for me, Spud (the pit) figured out an awesome short cut. Eat the cube = get ALL of the treats/food out quicker. Hopefully your dog won't be like mine.

Teaching tricks is awesome as well. It may seem simple, but it really makes them think. Go beyond the basics. I've taught Spud Sit, down, shake, stay, wait, speak, play dead, turn left, turn right, dance, and spin jump. We're working on heel, jumping through a hoop on command, and "find the treat" which is putting a treat under a cup and switching it around with two other cups.

Agility is also a great idea, and you can either go online to buy "agility in a bag" or build it yourself!

How big is your dog? I know that smaller terriers excel in Earth dog, but I'm not sure how suitable that would be for your dog.

Have you ever heard of Flyball? Or dock diving?

[nhollywood]

http://www.bestfriends.org/atthesanc...imals/dogs.cfm

You may want to try checking out the "Best Friends" website. They may have suggestions.