Rainy Day Activities for Your Dog

You will not catch me, a native of drought-ridden northern California, complaining about how many days of rain, we have had, no ma’am, nor about how many days of rain that we are being told are on the horizon. I say, BRING IT.

My year-old dog Boone, however, disagrees. He is bored, bored, boooored.

It hasn’t helped that both my husband and I have been sick with some sort of virus for what feels like weeks, and so I have only taken the dogs off the property for a proper walk only a couple times in the past few weeks.

Here’s what I’ve been doing to try to keep the adolescent dog (especially) entertained:

• Providing bones to chew. I recently found a local butcher who would take an order for the best kind of marrow bones – the leg bones that have been cut off cleanly at the ends. I’ve bought other bones from the butcher, but many of them come with either sharp edges or material that my aggressive chewers can just too easily chew off and swallow in chunks. The leg bones keep them occupied for long periods and have been a lifesaver (for me!) for the past few weeks.
• Providing cardboard boxes to destroy. Neither of my adult dogs chew cardboard, but Boone loves a big box. It can take him hours to shred a big Chewy box down to a pile of little scraps, and he’s happy to do it. I now save random boxes for him to tear up when I need an hour or so of uninterrupted time. Yes, it’s a mess, but if I keep the activity confined to my office, it cleans up pretty quickly.

• Food puzzles and food-spilling toys. I have to separate the dogs to employ these, so as great as they are for occupying the dogs, it takes a bit of management work to give everyone a turn, so these have not been high on my list, even though the dogs love them. Food-stuffed and frozen Kongs work more like bones; I can hand them out all around and everyone is happy for a while. But they don’t take much brain-power or reduce the dogs’ energy much.

What do you do with your dogs when they are super bored?