We’re well into the hottest months of summer, which can create some significant obstacles for getting your training sessions done, and keeping your dog exercised both physically and mentally. We thought it would be valuable to give you some tips and strategies for keeping your dog busy during the worst of the summer heat!
We’ll start with the obvious — if you must be outdoors with your dog, go out in the early morning, work in shady areas or wait until the sun has dropped low enough that it’s not roasting you like a rotisserie chicken. Densely wooded areas also tend to stay cooler in general, since they never get strong enough direct sunlight during the day to really heat up the air around ground level. Consider a nice training hike in the woods! And swimming and water activities are always fun if your dog enjoys it.
You’ll also want to make sure you offer your dog plenty of cool water to drink, and some dogs will also benefit from being wet down before and after working/exercising in the heat. If it’s over 85 degrees, keep outdoor sessions short (less than 15 minutes) particularly if it’s humid or your dog is doing a lot of high energy activities (retrieving, running, jumping etc.). If you have a short-faced breed such as a bulldog, boxer, or pug then you should be even more cautious about protecting them from the heat, as they are unable to cool themselves as efficiently as other dogs. Educate yourself on the signs of canine Heat Stroke and what to do if your dog starts overheating.
So, what are some options if you can’t or don’t want to be outdoors?
- Pet Friendly Stores – Take your dog to a location with air conditioning that allows dogs and do some training around distractions! Examples include pet stores, feedstores (Tractor Supply Co.), sports/outdoor hobby stores (Bass Pro, Gander Outdoors, Cabelas), hardware stores (Home Depot, Lowes, Homestead Gardens), bookstores (Half Price Books, some Barnes & Noble, Strand Bookstore), craft stores (Michaels, some Hobby Lobby’s), and even some malls/shopping centers and department stores are dog friendly (such as Savage Mill, Macys, Nordstrom)!
Pet-friendly stores are great places for general proofing around people, scents, unusual sights and other animals. You can work on heeling, stays, command discrimination (sit, down, stand), Place (please be considerate with this and don’t ask your dog to place on bags or items that can tear or ripped open by claws), retrieves, polite greetings, recalls away from distractions, and general socializing/confidence building. If your dog has stranger-danger issues, it can be a good idea to muzzle-train them first, so they can wear one in public without worrying about a bite as they build self-control and confidence.
We regularly schedule group training events at local stores and dog friendly locations, and any training client is welcome to join us! Check our Facebook page or keep an eye out for our monthly events email for details on upcoming social events. - Nosework – Otherwise known as Scent Work, this is a really fun activity that any dog can learn because all dogs love to use their nose! Similar to skills used in detection dog training, you can teach your dog to locate and alert specific scents. This is something you can easily set up and practice at home and in a variety of spaces, and really engages your dog’s brain! We offer a group class in Nosework several times a year (which you can repeat as many times as you like), or you can learn the sport from various books or online training courses.
- Proof Obedience at Home – Just because you’re stuck at home doesn’t mean you can’t progress your dog’s training! Proof stays with distractions, practice recalls from other rooms, do a Long Down while you watch a show or read a book, practice going to Place from a variety of locations or onto a variety of surfaces, or teach some new tricks!
With Place work, you can get really creative and also burn off some energy at the same time by setting up multiple Place beds/platforms and sending your dog from one Place to the other, and practicing position changes while on place, or doing lots of recalls off Place, return to heel position, and then being sent back to Place. This is also a good way to teach directional signals as you send them from one spot to the other. Be sure to vary the set up and challenges regularly so your dog doesn’t get bored!
If you’ve taken our Advanced Tricks & Retrieving class, and your dog knows a hold and carry command, use a few minutes to practice having your dog hold and retrieve a variety of different household objects to build their willingness to pick up and retrieve different things.
Training time in the house is also a good opportunity to improve fronts and finishes, pivots, “finding heel” position, and other skills that just take a lot of repetition, practice and reward without requiring a lot of space. Just be sure to keep your work on each skill brief (don’t over-drill your dog) and always end on a good rep! Many of these kinds of skills are covered in our Rally Obedience class. - Door manners – Does your dog go ballistic at the doorbell or when someone knocks? Rather than wait for the chaos to happen when you’re least expecting it, you can practice door manners and expectations with an intentional set up.
A good routine to practice for visitors is to teach your dog to recall and then go to Place when someone comes to the door, so you can answer without trying to keep the dog away from the door. Use a helper (if possible) to pretend to be your visitor knocking or ringing the doorbell. Have your dog wearing a leash or line, and have your Place location set up nearby.
Practice each step individually at first — recalling away from the door, then going to Place. You can use a cookie to toss near the door to get the dog in the general area so you can call them away. Once the dog is showing mastery of recalling away from the front door and going to Place without the excitement of a visitor, then start adding in the pre-cue of a door knock or doorbell and practice the recall & go to Place. Do not answer the door until the dog is responding correctly and smoothly despite the most energetic knocks and rings. When they have mastered that step, then you can start actually moving towards the door to open it after the dog has gone to Place, but be ready to put them back if they break. Reward holding Place frequently until you can go through the whole set up without issues, including opening the door and chatting with the person on the other side and your dog waits patiently on their Place spot.
You don’t need to get all this trained in a day, of course, but you can work each step for about 15 minutes daily until the dog is ready to move on to the next challenge. - Happy Vet Visits – This is good for just about any dog, but especially for those who might have anxiety or fear when visiting the vet office. With your vet’s permission, set up brief “happy visits” where you bring your dog into the vet office, do some training in the lobby, practice/reward Place on the scale, and if the dog seems ready for it, briefly going into an empty exam room and just doing some training + rewarding before leaving. You can eventually add in having a tech come in the room and chat with you while you train, or have the tech/vet ask your dog to perform some sits and downs for a treat, etc. The goal is to build positive associations with the vet clinic and teach the dog that not every interaction with a “vet person” is going to be negative. If your dog already has a history of biting at the vet, you should muzzle train your dog first and have them wear that muzzle while visiting, since it’s likely they’ll be wearing it at actual vet visits and you want everything to feel the same.
If this is an issue you’d really like to get some improvement on and would like help, we can offer private lessons to help you create a customized training plan! - Treadmill Training – If you have an extremely high energy dog, and also own a large treadmill, consider teaching your dog to jog on the treadmill! We do offer treadmill training at both of our Day Training Daycare locations, which your dog can receive while they are staying with us for daycare or Dog School. This is another skill we can teach you to do with your dog with a few in-studio private lessons as well.
- Daycare Programs – Last but not least, when the heat just wont quit and you have limited time to get your dog out, schedule them for Day Training Daycare or Dog School! Your dog can spend the day with us with plenty of playtime indoors, controlled and supervised time outside to protect them from the heat, and get lots of mental stimulation and training reinforcement. Dog School dogs also can get field trips off-campus to work in dog friendly stores. We work with dogs of all social skills, so even if your dog isn’t friendly with other dogs, we can give them solo playtime and training sessions to keep them busy.
We hope this list gives you some great ideas for how to keep your dog’s training maintained while also staying cool this summer!
