Walking with your dog doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, walks are the ideal time to spend some quality time training your dog. Practicing basic obedience skills while on walks with your dog can help improve your dog’s ability to focus around distractions and increase impulse control and engagement. These training games are a fun way to energize walking with your dog while building and reinforcing trained skills at the same time. Dogs love to play, and making training a game can help your dog to develop and hone obedience skills more quickly.
These walking games can be played with your dog walking anywhere, whether you’re out hiking or taking a stroll in your local neighborhood. These games don’t require any specialized equipment to play, just some basic dog supplies, including:
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A foundational skill that dogs and puppies of all ages should know is their name. When your dog hears their name called, you want them to pay attention to you. This skill is relatively easy for most dogs and puppies to master when they’re at home or in low-distraction environments, but when you go out walking, it can be more difficult. The goal here is for dogs to make the association that hearing their name is a cue to engage with you and that doing so will be rewarded.
Step 1: Assuming your dog already knows their name, and you’ve practiced the behavior at home, you can start saying it while out walking. Praise and reward your dog for paying attention to you after saying their name. If at any point your dog doesn’t respond to their name, that’s a sign your dog doesn’t understand the cue with that level of distraction. Move to a less distracting area, and say your dog’s name again. Praise and reward your dog when they look at you.
Step 2: While you can use this behavior to get your dog’s attention in distracting environments, switch up when and where you say your dog’s name while walking so your dog doesn’t start to anticipate when you’ll ask for the behavior.
“Focus on Me” is an ideal starter walking game for dogs of all ages. With this activity, we aren’t asking or cuing our dogs to do anything. Instead, we’re going to mark and reward our dogs anytime they offer any focus or attention to us. This helps to build engagement around distractions.
Step 1: Have your training treats ready, and anytime your dog looks at you, verbally mark with a “yes” or click and treat your dog if you’re clicker training. When you first get started, keep the criteria low and reward even just a glance in your direction. By rewarding these small glances, your dog will start offering more attention.
Step 2: Continue marking and rewarding anytime your dog looks at you while walking. As your dog gets better at the game, you can wait until they turn their head to look at you before marking and rewarding.
©Stieber - stock.adobe.com
Step 3: Once your dog regularly offers attention, you can add a verbal cue like “watch” or “eyes.” To do this, say your cue of choice as your dog looks up at you. Then, reward your dog with a treat and praise when they look at you.
Step 4: After several repetitions over a few training sessions, you can start to give the verbal watch cue before your dog offers to look at you. When your dog looks up and offers attention, give your dog praise and treats.
It’s beneficial to give our dogs as much freedom and agency as possible. Although it sounds counterintuitive because we’re not actually cuing any behavior from our dogs, a successful training game to play with our dogs is to take them on a sniffy walk. The point of these walks is to allow our dogs to sniff as much as they want. Ideally, we allow our dogs (where safe) to dictate what direction we walk. Sniffing is a natural behavior for our dogs. Allowing them to sniff more is not only highly rewarding but also soothing. By providing your dog with more unfocused sniffing walks, you may see an increase in positive traits, including better focus and impulse control when training. Sniffing also can support your dog with decompressing and reducing overall levels of stress. Working through that stress can also help your dog be more focused when you return to training. Not every walk needs to be a sniffy walk, but try to make them a regular part of your dog’s routine.
Step 1: Pick a time to walk when you aren’t in a hurry to get to work or any other appointment.
Step 2: When it’s safe to do so, allow your dog to pick the direction of your walk. When your dog stops to sniff, stop as well, and don’t hurry them along.
Step 3: With the exception of preventing your dog from doing something unsafe, like going into traffic or approaching another dog or person uninvited, let your dog continue to pick the direction and pace of your walk.
Step 4: While your dog is sniffing, try to keep your verbal cues to a minimum. We want to make sure our dogs understand that we aren’t dictating the direction of their walk. Instead, let them take the lead on the walk.
©Peter Kirillov - stock.adobe.com
With loose leash walking, an important skill for dogs to learn is to modulate their pace to match yours. This is useful for daily life when you’ll need to walk at different speeds, and it’s also an important foundation skill for sports like AKC Rally, where speed changes between slow, normal, and fast are required. When working on pace changes, we don’t want to surprise our dogs by suddenly changing pace. Instead, we want to teach them to anticipate those pace changes by communicating our intentions. This game helps keep your dog focused and engaged with you while walking and can be useful for maneuvering your dog through tricky situations. For example, if there are a lot of distractions ahead, you might want to ask your dog to change to a fast pace with you and speed through to a quieter area.
Step 1: As you’re about to change pace either slower or faster, take a treat and put it down to your dog’s nose.
Step 2: When you have your dog’s attention with the treat, change your pace, for example, to walk slowly. Your treat will serve as a lure to help adjust your dog’s speed. When your dog matches your pace, give your dog prizes or treats.
Step 3: Repeat the above step while changing your pace from normal to fast. Praise and treat your dog when they adjust their speed to match yours.
Step 4: As you practice changing speed and are confident your dog will respond to the treat, lure, and adjust their pace. You can introduce a verbal cue for each speed like, “slow” and “fast.” Once your dog gets more confident with the behavior, you can phase out the lure and just give your verbal cue.
Step 5: As your dog understands the behavior of changing pace, you can mix in pace changes to your regular daily walks. You can also have a friend or family member call out different speeds to you while walking to create a challenging game for both you and your dog.
Sometimes referred to as an urban agility game, with parkour, you and your dog are going to engage with the environment around you as an obstacle course. A primary benefit of playing parkour is that these behaviors can build your dog’s confidence, as well as their body awareness and coordination. You can play parkour games anywhere you walk your dog, including sidewalks and city parks. Parkour games allow you to turn any walk into an adventure and create exciting challenges for owners as you search for interesting obstacles for your dog to engage with as they walk.
Step 1: Look for stable obstacles in your environment your dog could interact with, like a tree stump, boulder, or park bench.
Step 2: Ask your dog to foot target, get onto, or in some other way engage with the obstacle that you’ve found. If your dog doesn’t yet know these behaviors, you can use treats to lure your dog up onto different obstacles. When your dog engages with the obstacle as you have cued, praise and treat your dog.
©Kate - stock.adobe.com
Step 3: You can use treats to lure your dog to go around tree trunks, or go under picnic tables and any other obstacles you find. After luring your dog a few times, you can add in verbal cues for these behaviors and start to phase out luring. The goal with this game is to make your walk as engaging for your dog by finding as many different obstacles as possible for your dog to interact with.
Step 5: Start to utilize parkour games to keep your dog engaged in walks. If you have a dog who struggles to switch reactivity at the sight of other dogs, you can use parkour games to create space and keep focus on you. This can help reduce your dog’s reactivity and make walks more fun for both of you.
Do you remember playing the red light/green light game on the playground when you were in elementary school? With that game, you walk or run when someone says, “green light,” and stop as fast as you can when someone says, “red light.” We can play a dog training version of this game with our dogs to practice staying around distractions. You can play this game on your own where you challenge your dog, or play with other dog training friends where someone else is calling out “red light” and “green light” to challenge both you and your dog.
Step 1: Make sure you have taught your dog the basics of stand-stay and a release word and are ready to start practicing these skills around distractions while on walks.
Step 2: As you’re walking, pick a random moment (or have a friend call out “red light”) and give your dog their “stand-stay” cue. When your dog stops moving forward, praise and reward your dog. If your dog doesn’t hold the stand stay, go back to where you wanted your dog to stay, and ask them to stay again. Praise and reward your dog for staying.
©Canadeez - stock.adobe.com
Step 3: For an added challenge, instead of stopping with your dog when you ask them to do a stand stay, you can keep walking a couple of steps. Be sure to praise and reward your dog when they hold the stay as you keep moving. If your dog doesn’t hold the stay, practice again, but stop with your dog to make sure they understand the behavior. Then, try the red-light game again.
Step 4: Start with playing this game in a quiet area and build up to playing in more distracting environments while out walking. Be sure to vary how frequently you call “red light,” so your dog doesn’t anticipate when the stay cue will come.
The post How to Incorporate Dog Training Games Into Your Walks appeared first on American Kennel Club.
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Supplies You’ll Need
These walking games can be played with your dog walking anywhere, whether you’re out hiking or taking a stroll in your local neighborhood. These games don’t require any specialized equipment to play, just some basic dog supplies, including:
- 6-foot training leash
- Collar or harness
- Clicker (if you’re doing clicker training)
- Training treats
The Name Game
©Justyna - stock.adobe.com
A foundational skill that dogs and puppies of all ages should know is their name. When your dog hears their name called, you want them to pay attention to you. This skill is relatively easy for most dogs and puppies to master when they’re at home or in low-distraction environments, but when you go out walking, it can be more difficult. The goal here is for dogs to make the association that hearing their name is a cue to engage with you and that doing so will be rewarded.
Step 1: Assuming your dog already knows their name, and you’ve practiced the behavior at home, you can start saying it while out walking. Praise and reward your dog for paying attention to you after saying their name. If at any point your dog doesn’t respond to their name, that’s a sign your dog doesn’t understand the cue with that level of distraction. Move to a less distracting area, and say your dog’s name again. Praise and reward your dog when they look at you.
Step 2: While you can use this behavior to get your dog’s attention in distracting environments, switch up when and where you say your dog’s name while walking so your dog doesn’t start to anticipate when you’ll ask for the behavior.
Focus On Me
“Focus on Me” is an ideal starter walking game for dogs of all ages. With this activity, we aren’t asking or cuing our dogs to do anything. Instead, we’re going to mark and reward our dogs anytime they offer any focus or attention to us. This helps to build engagement around distractions.
Step 1: Have your training treats ready, and anytime your dog looks at you, verbally mark with a “yes” or click and treat your dog if you’re clicker training. When you first get started, keep the criteria low and reward even just a glance in your direction. By rewarding these small glances, your dog will start offering more attention.
Step 2: Continue marking and rewarding anytime your dog looks at you while walking. As your dog gets better at the game, you can wait until they turn their head to look at you before marking and rewarding.
©Stieber - stock.adobe.com
Step 3: Once your dog regularly offers attention, you can add a verbal cue like “watch” or “eyes.” To do this, say your cue of choice as your dog looks up at you. Then, reward your dog with a treat and praise when they look at you.
Step 4: After several repetitions over a few training sessions, you can start to give the verbal watch cue before your dog offers to look at you. When your dog looks up and offers attention, give your dog praise and treats.
Sniffy Walks
It’s beneficial to give our dogs as much freedom and agency as possible. Although it sounds counterintuitive because we’re not actually cuing any behavior from our dogs, a successful training game to play with our dogs is to take them on a sniffy walk. The point of these walks is to allow our dogs to sniff as much as they want. Ideally, we allow our dogs (where safe) to dictate what direction we walk. Sniffing is a natural behavior for our dogs. Allowing them to sniff more is not only highly rewarding but also soothing. By providing your dog with more unfocused sniffing walks, you may see an increase in positive traits, including better focus and impulse control when training. Sniffing also can support your dog with decompressing and reducing overall levels of stress. Working through that stress can also help your dog be more focused when you return to training. Not every walk needs to be a sniffy walk, but try to make them a regular part of your dog’s routine.
Step 1: Pick a time to walk when you aren’t in a hurry to get to work or any other appointment.
Step 2: When it’s safe to do so, allow your dog to pick the direction of your walk. When your dog stops to sniff, stop as well, and don’t hurry them along.
Step 3: With the exception of preventing your dog from doing something unsafe, like going into traffic or approaching another dog or person uninvited, let your dog continue to pick the direction and pace of your walk.
Step 4: While your dog is sniffing, try to keep your verbal cues to a minimum. We want to make sure our dogs understand that we aren’t dictating the direction of their walk. Instead, let them take the lead on the walk.
©Peter Kirillov - stock.adobe.com
Pace Changes
With loose leash walking, an important skill for dogs to learn is to modulate their pace to match yours. This is useful for daily life when you’ll need to walk at different speeds, and it’s also an important foundation skill for sports like AKC Rally, where speed changes between slow, normal, and fast are required. When working on pace changes, we don’t want to surprise our dogs by suddenly changing pace. Instead, we want to teach them to anticipate those pace changes by communicating our intentions. This game helps keep your dog focused and engaged with you while walking and can be useful for maneuvering your dog through tricky situations. For example, if there are a lot of distractions ahead, you might want to ask your dog to change to a fast pace with you and speed through to a quieter area.
Step 1: As you’re about to change pace either slower or faster, take a treat and put it down to your dog’s nose.
Step 2: When you have your dog’s attention with the treat, change your pace, for example, to walk slowly. Your treat will serve as a lure to help adjust your dog’s speed. When your dog matches your pace, give your dog prizes or treats.
Step 3: Repeat the above step while changing your pace from normal to fast. Praise and treat your dog when they adjust their speed to match yours.
Step 4: As you practice changing speed and are confident your dog will respond to the treat, lure, and adjust their pace. You can introduce a verbal cue for each speed like, “slow” and “fast.” Once your dog gets more confident with the behavior, you can phase out the lure and just give your verbal cue.
Step 5: As your dog understands the behavior of changing pace, you can mix in pace changes to your regular daily walks. You can also have a friend or family member call out different speeds to you while walking to create a challenging game for both you and your dog.
Parkour
Sometimes referred to as an urban agility game, with parkour, you and your dog are going to engage with the environment around you as an obstacle course. A primary benefit of playing parkour is that these behaviors can build your dog’s confidence, as well as their body awareness and coordination. You can play parkour games anywhere you walk your dog, including sidewalks and city parks. Parkour games allow you to turn any walk into an adventure and create exciting challenges for owners as you search for interesting obstacles for your dog to engage with as they walk.
Step 1: Look for stable obstacles in your environment your dog could interact with, like a tree stump, boulder, or park bench.
Step 2: Ask your dog to foot target, get onto, or in some other way engage with the obstacle that you’ve found. If your dog doesn’t yet know these behaviors, you can use treats to lure your dog up onto different obstacles. When your dog engages with the obstacle as you have cued, praise and treat your dog.
©Kate - stock.adobe.com
Step 3: You can use treats to lure your dog to go around tree trunks, or go under picnic tables and any other obstacles you find. After luring your dog a few times, you can add in verbal cues for these behaviors and start to phase out luring. The goal with this game is to make your walk as engaging for your dog by finding as many different obstacles as possible for your dog to interact with.
Step 5: Start to utilize parkour games to keep your dog engaged in walks. If you have a dog who struggles to switch reactivity at the sight of other dogs, you can use parkour games to create space and keep focus on you. This can help reduce your dog’s reactivity and make walks more fun for both of you.
Red Light/Green Light
Do you remember playing the red light/green light game on the playground when you were in elementary school? With that game, you walk or run when someone says, “green light,” and stop as fast as you can when someone says, “red light.” We can play a dog training version of this game with our dogs to practice staying around distractions. You can play this game on your own where you challenge your dog, or play with other dog training friends where someone else is calling out “red light” and “green light” to challenge both you and your dog.
Step 1: Make sure you have taught your dog the basics of stand-stay and a release word and are ready to start practicing these skills around distractions while on walks.
Step 2: As you’re walking, pick a random moment (or have a friend call out “red light”) and give your dog their “stand-stay” cue. When your dog stops moving forward, praise and reward your dog. If your dog doesn’t hold the stand stay, go back to where you wanted your dog to stay, and ask them to stay again. Praise and reward your dog for staying.
©Canadeez - stock.adobe.com
Step 3: For an added challenge, instead of stopping with your dog when you ask them to do a stand stay, you can keep walking a couple of steps. Be sure to praise and reward your dog when they hold the stay as you keep moving. If your dog doesn’t hold the stay, practice again, but stop with your dog to make sure they understand the behavior. Then, try the red-light game again.
Step 4: Start with playing this game in a quiet area and build up to playing in more distracting environments while out walking. Be sure to vary how frequently you call “red light,” so your dog doesn’t anticipate when the stay cue will come.
The post How to Incorporate Dog Training Games Into Your Walks appeared first on American Kennel Club.
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