Holiday Peace & Joy with the Family Dog

by BetteYip, CPDT

It’s that time of year again! Families are bustling about preparing the holidays, leaving the family dog wondering why the humans of the house are suddenly less attentive.

This sometimes causes our dog to seek out new, more creative ways to get our attention as well as ways to amuse themselves, and sometimes, we humans don’t appreciate our dog’s choice of activities. This season, be proactive—start preparing your dog for the holidays now!

Every holiday season, we dog trainers pass out the usual tips:
• Help your dog feel more at ease and better deal with the stress of the season by adding more structure into your canine’s daily routines around the holidays.
• Schedule plenty of well-timed canine exercise sessions, keeping in mind your particular dog’s physical needs and limits.
• Set up training activities to role play model behavior in preparation for the real deal. A well-trained “Park It” cue can go a long way towards creating holiday bliss. My own dog has spent many a Thanksgiving feast on her own mat near the dining room table, chewing on her own special holiday goodie rather than sticking her sizeable snout into the mashed potatoes—but it took a good deal of dog training practice, starting with short sessions and building up before this behavior became a realistic expectation.
• Until your dog’s behavior is trained well enough to warrant freedomüse dogproofed management zones to keep your dog out of trouble when you won’t be able to supervise carefully enough.
• Be cautious with holiday perils such as chocolate, cooked turkey or chicken bones, glitter, tinsel, small toys, electrical cords of holiday decorations and many more items that can ruin a holiday with pets. Keep them out of reach!

This year, you may also find it useful to get your dog hooked on a few great puzzle toys to help her stay self-entertained when you need time to yourself this season. Teaching your dog to play with puzzle toys also provides your pooch mental stimulation and a little extra exercise, which will help your dog to relax better during naptimes. Your dog may learn to enjoy these new puzzle toys so much that you’ll even decide to add a few extras to your doggie holiday gift list!

So, what is a “puzzle toy” for dogs. Most people are familiar with the classic Kong toy, which is a hollowed out piece of rubber meant to be baited with food filling so that a dog has to really work to get the goodies out. Since its introduction, the market has been flooded with innovative new canine puzzle toys. Brilliantly simple, and a favorite of every dog I’ve introduced it to, is Nina Ottoson’s Dog Pyramid, a self-righting fillable toy. As your dog nose-pushes it and swats at it to knock the goodies out, it pops itself back up. Feed your dog meals out of such a toy, and mealtime becomes a wonderfully tiring and enriching event in itself!

Another of my recent favorites is Premier’s Tug-a-Jug, made of a tug rope tied into a bullet-proof plastic jug with a removable bottom. The toy also has a nubby rubber hollowed out ball around the opening of the jug, for additional chewing entertainment. Put some small dog food pieces or treats in the body of the jug, along with a hunk that’s too big to come out, and with a little training, you can teach your dog how to grab the rope, fling the toy, paw the toy, chew on the toy—and eventually, empty out the small bits of food. Again, this makes for a creative way to feed dogs their meals while keeping them out of your hair for a while, too.

Some dogs figure out puzzle toys easily without much human guidance. With each one they conquer, their problem solving skills grow, making the toy that much more fun. Other dogs need a little more coaching to figure a new puzzle toy out.