"My dog is bored..."

This is from a post I made years ago on a Greyhound owner group. I never put it in blog form, and now that we're all on coronavirus shelter-in-place/quarantine, here's a good time. Disregard tips that require meeting up with other people. This post isn't meant to be an exhaustive list either. Be creative!

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Tips for dog boredom: join the Canine Enrichment group on Facebook.

Feed out of interactive puzzles and dispensers.


Feed by using canine instinct to scavenge and hunt by smell. 

Use snuffle mats or lick mats of various types. 

Throw kibble in grass and let your dog find it. 


Hide food in the yard and indoors.


Train tricks, using shaping to tire your dog's brain. Advanced shaping!   What is shaping?  

(Shaping is reinforcing smaller behaviors that make up a trick such as "sit pretty" then smoothing it out into one behavior.)

Why do dummies keep saying we can't sit!

Chin rest

Learn tricks and skills for Rally or Obedience!


Find new games to play like food catch, shell game, hide and seek, find food, which hand (has food)...

If your dog fetches or even tries to grab thrown toys, work on solidifying that fetch. 

Yes, it can be reinforced. 


 

Let them rip up bags and old toys.

This is fun for me!

Take a nosework class or learn it online to do it at home. 

Kits are not expensive, then by the time you're done, your dog is practically ready to test for a first title in nosework/scentwork (ORT). 


The first odor is birch:

nosework kit

Got room? Make obstacles and do an obstacle course.



Give your dog a place to dig or find buried treasures. 



Teach your dog to track scents outdoors. Good old coyote tracking.



Targeting with nose or paw, or both!  ("Touch")

Relearning a long-forgotten "touch" (and yes, you can see when he tries "paw" instead.)



Take your dogs on an errand trip -- this is exhausting. You don't need to go long. Stop in three different places (yes, get out of the car with your dog and go around, then get back in for the next errand even if it's just pretend shopping or window shopping), mission complete, go home.



Get out with the flirt pole. Here's how to get started safely!


The favorite toy and bite play cooldown.









Extra-long smell walk or hike  (sniffari).

 













Playdate with other dogs.

 

Hiking up to a view

Walk meetups with other dogs and their people.



Hike to new places: 


Walk and do training on the walk. That's exhausting.



Never too old to learn. 

Practice walking together

How Stupid Myths Start

Some decently intentioned person on reddit/greyhounds decided to advise a potential adopter about getting a retired racer, then posted this ridiculous falsehood on 3.13.20:

This is complete crap. There is no bone structure difference or feature that prevents Greyhounds from sitting or from learning to sit like any other large sighthound or large dog does. If there were, wouldn't some scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals have noted this? By the way, Greyhounds are NOT exempt from sitting for the AKC Canine Good Citizen test (read it in the CGC evaluator's rule book!!!) or exempted from sits in Rally, Obedience, Agility or from any other stays and contacts in dog sports. If your evaluator passed your Greyhound for the CGC without a sit, guess what? They deliberately ignored the evaluator rules.


But this is how crazy myths start, as someone will come along and repeat this same thing to other unknowing people.


Greyhound puppies sit on their own. They are just not reinforced to do it. Why? Because racing Greyhounds in general aren't obedience-trained or trick-trained. Some are and know sit! They exist.  There just isn't a standard list of behaviors they need to pass to move on to the next stage of racing.  

My dog has learned plenty of behaviors for his TKN then forgotten many from not practicing or using them regularly. Some adult Greyhounds sit on their own without prompting or cueing.



I don't know who started the myth. (I don't know who started the myth that Greyhounds can't swim.)

Even my XL male learned a sit for his trick dog titles, but since we stopped practicing it after those, he unlearned the cue. He unlearned a bunch of cues since that time.