Do you leave your dog or dogs alone for long hours while you are out working or active in the community? Or, like me, are you at home a lot but glued to your computer? If so, your dog is probably bored at times.

Well, so what? We are all bored at times, aren’t we? Isn’t that just part of life?

If your dog is just bored and lies around, that’s one thing, but bored dogs may go looking for something fun to do. And that could be bad news for you…

I’ll never forget the time we came home from a few hours of doing errands. We had had our Rottweiler Lola a few months, and she was about a year old. She had never paid attention to our vegetable garden before, but this time she must have been bored and looking for fun. She found it in the carrot bed…

When we got home, there were carrot greens and half-chewed carrots strewn all over the yard near where the carrots had been planted. She had not left a one.

Now, part of this was because I use carrots as rewards in dog training, so she knew the taste! But also, she was likely bored.

Two Ways to Avert Boredom in Dogs

Kongs

My all-time favorite way to entertain a bored dog is with a Kong , a large and virtually indestructable toy that you can fill with peanut butter, carrots (a proven favorite at our house obviously!), dog food, all sorts of things…

See my page called Dog Toy Kong for lots of tips. Here’s a link to a large one at Amazon:

I keep our several Kongs on top of the refrigerator, well out of reach since the aroma of peanut butter can linger! I don’t let the dogs have them in any rooms with carpets, but most of our floors are tile.

There are other similar things. When we had a Basenji, she was greatly entertained by a Buster Cube, where she had to roll it around to get little bits of her dry food to fall out. Believe me, if you ever have a Basenji, you really want them to be entertained! For the ten years of Sunbeam’s life, we never could have a trash basket on the floor.

Exercise

Hey, we all know that exercise is good for our dogs AND for us. There are some dogs who will really tear a house apart when you leave if they haven’t had enough exercise. But a long walk, some ball playing or whatever it takes, and they become very mellow. If you have a dog or puppy like this, you know it! Got a Border Collie? Hmm, the minimum amount of exercise should keep you in great shape too!

Readers, how do you avert boredom in your dogs?