5 Easy Ways to Add Mental Stimulation to Your Puppy's Daily Routine

I'm Dale Buchanan, and this is Puppy Talk, the podcast that offers free advice and tips for raising a happy, healthy, and obedient puppy. For more information on this podcast, visit us online at puppytalkpodcast.com. Welcome to Puppy Talk Episode Number 145. I'm your host, Dale Buchanan, and today I'm going to talk about five easy ways to add mental stimulation to your puppy's daily routine. This is going to be a little bit of a different podcast, and if you like to do interactive things with your puppy to ultimately tire them out and make them calm, then this is the podcast for you. When people think of wearing out a puppy, they immediately think of exercise, longer walks, more playtime, more running around the yard. While physical exercise is important, it's only part of the picture. A puppy's brain needs exercise too. Mental stimulation helps reduce boredom, builds confidence, improves problem solving skills, and can even decrease unwanted behaviors like chewing, barking, digging, and getting into trouble around the house. Today I'm sharing five simple ways you can easily add mental stimulation to your puppy's everyday routine without spending a lot of money or adding hours to your day. Let's get started. Number one, turn mealtime into a brain game. Instead of simply pouring your puppy's food into a bowl, having them eat it, and then getting on with their day, make your puppy work for their meal. I tell my clients this all the time use the meal for training and you're accomplishing a lot. You're killing two birds with one stone. Ideas for using the food with training include food puzzles, such as a stuffed Kong or a lickey mat, stuffed rubber toys that are similar to Kongs, but also that they can move around and get the kibble out as it falls out of little holes and onto the ground so that they can eat it after they've done the work. A snuffle mat, which is like fake grass, and you put treats into the grass and they have to find, they have to forage and find the treats inside that fake grass. It's very good enrichment for the puppy. Try this. Scatter your puppy's kibble onto the grass in your backyard. Tell the puppy to find it. They'll have a great time looking for that food and foraging through the grass. They may also dig a little bit, but that's okay. They like digging and they like finding new things that are not going to harm them. There are multiple benefits of turning mealtime into a brain game. They include it slows down the eating process because a lot of puppies eat too fast. It encourages natural foraging instincts. It burns mental energy because the puppy has to think. And it makes mealtime more exciting. It's not just eating out of a bowl and then that's it. You don't have to do this every day with every meal, but every once in a while it's a good idea. Number two, teach your puppy something new every week. Mental stimulation doesn't always mean complicated tricks. Your puppy loves learning. Some simple skills that you can do include teaching the touch command or target training. I use target pads. They're blue and yellow because dogs can see in two colors. They have two receptors in their eyes, blue and yellow. And we put these pads on the ground, the puppy's paw has to touch it, and then they get a food reward for it. Practice with your puppy going to their bed from a distance. Stand 10 feet away from the bed and say, Go to your bed and see if they can do it. When they do it, you say yes, which is the marker, and you give them the food reward. Tell the puppy to wait. Have some food in your hand. Have them figure out how to sit down, but don't cue them to sit down. Cue them with the word wait. They have to be patient. Learn frustration tolerance. Learn how to wait and be calm. This is a very good mental stimulation activity for your puppy. You can work with your puppy on leave it, get a sock or get something that they like to get in their mouth and run around the house with. Put it on the ground, tell them to leave it. When they back away, say yes as a marker and give them the food reward as the reinforcer. This is a great way to teach them not to get things in their mouth that they're not supposed to have. You can also do a game called Find Your Toy. You can name a toy, associate that this is a toy such as a dinosaur or a cow or whatever shape that the toy is, and ask the puppy to find it, go get it out of the pile and bring it back to you. You'd be surprised at how quickly your puppy can learn to do something like that. Keep in mind that you want to keep training sessions short. Five minutes is often plenty for a puppy. Eile your puppy is still excited and successful. And remember, learning itself is mentally exhausting. Number three, let your puppy use their nose. I have a golden doodle that I work with, he's 10 months old, and I work with him at my house periodically. And I notice that when I take him out to unknown territory, to unknown grass, he likes to sniff around a lot. And I encourage the owners of this puppy to do the same thing with Bodie, to get him out in the grass and sniff a lot. Their nose is one of the most powerful tools they have. Some other simple scent games include hide treats around the room. I took a German Shepherd to Dick's sporting goods once with the owners, and the dog was bored because everything there was so easy to do. Sit down, stay, cum. So we got some treats and we hid them throughout the store on shelves behind items, and the German Shepherd puppy found them very quickly. It was very mentally stimulating for that puppy. After ten minutes it laid down and took a nap right in the store. It was so tired. Another idea is to put treats under cups and let your puppy find the right cup. This is a lot of fun, and you'd be surprised how quickly your puppy can pick it up and find the treat under the cup because they use their nose so good they know exactly where it is. And the final way is create easy find it games around the house. I like to have the puppy smell something that's in a Kong, and then you hide the Kong somewhere in the house when they're not looking. You have to have two people, one person will distract the puppy, and you hide the Kong that's stuffed with whatever it is they just smelled, and then you tell them find it, and they'll go around the house and they'll find it probably within 60 seconds. Dogs are very smart and they use their nose very well. These activities build confidence while exercising your puppy's brain in a very natural way. Number four, rotate toys instead of leaving them out. When I go to a client's house and they have toys all over the place, I tell them, put them in a bin and bring them up high so your puppy can't see them. Give the puppy one toy at a time. Many owners that I go to have 20, 30, or more toys for their puppy, but you don't want to give the puppy access to the toys all at once. Eventually the puppy's going to lose interest in all of them. Here's what you do instead. Keep the toys up high, bring one toy out for a few days, give it to the puppy, interactive with the puppy. Maybe it's a rope, maybe they're learning how to play tug or they're learning how to fetch a ball. And then once they get tired of that, you do something else. The novelty of the fresh toy keeps your puppy engaged without buying more toys. Number five, let your puppy solve small problems. I say this to my clients all the time. Grab some treats, hold it to the puppy's nose. Don't tell the puppy what to do. When they sit, give them a reward. When they lay down on their own, give the puppy a reward. And you want to make sure that you reward good behavior on an ongoing basis like this. Let the puppy think instead of constantly giving them direction all the time. Dog training isn't about giving direction of commands all the time. It's about teaching your puppy how to think on their own. Here are some other examples of how to let your puppy solve problems. Get a puzzle that your puppy has to get the food out of by maneuvering different compartments, lifting up latches, sliding some things over, taking some pieces out so they can get the food. This is a lot of fun for them and it's mentally stimulating. Put a hidden treat inside of a stuffed cong surrounded by their kibble. Tell them that they're going to get their favorite treat, if maybe it's cheese. Tell them, there's cheese inside here, go ahead and find it. Well, they have to get their kibble out first, and then they can get the cheese. That's a lot of fun for the puppy. If you have a little dog park where you live, which a lot of my clients do, especially if they live in an apartment, if there's an obstacle course in this dog park, have them start using that obstacle course. I worked with a Bernie Doodle a couple of years ago who loved the obstacle course. He loved going up a ramp and walking on a plank and going through a tunnel. This was very exciting for him, and it's also great mental stimulation. You want to avoid making everything too easy. You want to have some challenge to the puppy. Another thing that can help build the puppy's confidence is walking up and down stairs. If they're resistant and reluctant to walk up and down stairs, a good confidence builder is to use stairs as a tool to build their confidence and build their self-esteem. The goal is to let your puppy experience success through problem solving. So with the stair example, you don't want to help them too much, but you want to enable them to figure out how to put the pause down on the next step below if they're going down or on the step up if they're going up. Have them figure most of it out by giving them a little guidance. Confidence grows when puppies discover solutions on their own. Here's a bonus tip. Remember that mental stimulation doesn't have to be complicated. Even everyday activities can become learning experiences. Ask for a sit before opening the door. Practice weight before meals. Have your puppy touch your hand before throwing a toy. Little moments throughout the day add up to a mentally healthy puppy. And a mentally stimulated puppy is a tired puppy. A tired puppy is a good puppy. In review, if your puppy seems to have endless energy, don't assume they simply need more exercise. Sometimes they need more opportunities to think, to use their brain, to be mentally stimulated. A mentally stimulated puppy is often calmer, more confident, and easier to live with. Try adding one or two of these ideas this week and see how your puppy responds. I hope this information was helpful to you. If you have any questions about the content in this podcast, you can reach me through the website, puppytalkpodcast.com. Have a great day.