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Challenge Your Dog

Stress happens every day for many reasons, including learning new things or practicing known behaviors to perfection. Without stress responses, your dog would probably not learn.

But beyond the comfort zone, stress stops being helpful and can start causing major damage to your dog’s mind and body.

Imagine if our dogs can help us around the house. With our dogs doing the chores, life would be so much easier, right? Some trainers say we should give our dogs jobs in order to solve their behavior issues, and in reality, that is pretty much exactly what you should do. However, putting on a backpack and adding a jar of pickles for weight is not a "job"; it does not challenge the dog in anyway except physically.

Many dogs are trained to help the disabled. These assistance/service dogs are trained to help out around the house, doing things like opening the fridge, fetch objects, turning the lights on and off, alerting to sound and movement and so much more.


Dogs’ roles in society, which in the last 100 years became more of a companion then a partner, are again expanding. Dogs are companions and also assume special roles for assistance or therapy by volunteers or human health professionals. Many changes are appearing in new research findings and evolving regulatory and legislative updates around the roles of dogs in society. In addition to time honored jobs like search and rescue, herding, hunting and guarding the home place, dogs are even being used in therapeutic endeavors acting as helpers during play therapy.


Although most modern dogs are kept as pets, there are still a tremendous number of ways in which dogs can and do assist humans, and more uses are found for them every year. Most of those "jobs" are pretty specialized however, and the majority of owners have neither the need for a working dog or the time necessary to transport the dog somewhere to do it's "job". But teaching your dog to do the laundry helps you nearly everyday and you don't need to fire up the car.


Here are a few ways you can challenge your dog


Have Your Dog Work For Their Food. Our dogs have it pretty easy when it comes to meal time. ...

Let Your Dog Sniff & Explore on Walks. ...

Get Your Dog a Puzzle Toy. ...

Teach Your Dog Some New Tricks. ...

Play Some Nose Work Games. ...

Teach Your Dog the Names of Their Toys. ...

Play Some Free Shaping Games. ...

Make an Obstacle Course For Your Dog