To alleviate the boredom of being a big cone head I introduced Angus to some scent games. I’ve noticed whenever he is out and about he is a ‘sniffing’ kind of guy so I thought I could use this natural aptitude to bring a bit of fun to his convalescence.
Even with a high energy pup, it isn’t all about walking to oblivion. Too much exercise can actually have the opposite effect you’re after, over-stimulating a sensitive pup. It’s as important, if not more important to exercise your pupster’s brain.
Sniffing is a great enrichment activity with the added bonus of bringing calm to a stressed out dog. So make sure you always allow time for some serious sniffing because this is how he gathers the low-down on everything that’s happening around him.
I’d read a fair bit about introducing scent games to your dog – there’s a whole world on the internet about this (and qualifications too, I found out).
One of our training games in the morning is ‘sniff the hand’ – I present him with two closed fists – one has a treat in it. I make him sniff each one and then he has to tell me which hand the treat is in. He is adorable at this game. He used to use his big heavy paw to pick the right hand, now he uses his nose to really sniff that treat out. So he already had a good grasp of the basics. We have variations on this with ‘find the food/treats’. He has to ‘stay’ while I hide some food and he has to find it. Again, he is excellent at this as he is very food orientated.
While he was recovering from his surgery I bought a bag of catnip from the pet store and picked some mint and rosemary from the garden. I also a got a bit creative (I’m not very handy with a needle and thread but Angus is not judgemental) and made some felt pockets for the herbs.
I introduced to him to catnip first and then the rosemary followed by the mint. He seemed to love the toy with the mint smell and easily located it. We mixed things up a bit so I could see if he was really using his nose or his memory to bring me the various scented pockets.
It’s early days but we might make a sniffer dog out of him yet. At least he forgot about the cone of shame for a while.