Health: 5 Indoor Activities You Can Do With Your Pets During the Wretched Haze

Poor Fido must be wondering why we’ve been cutting down on walks. But Fido doesn’t care if there’s the haze, it just wants to play! Even with the haze it shouldn’t let it dampen your mood and deprive your pets from important stimulation. Try some of these indoor activities for pets,  it’s a great way to build a strong bond between you and your pets.

Hide and Seek

Not only good during this period, it’s great way to expend energy for dogs with too much energy and for us who have too little.

How to play this game:

1. Throw a treat on the floor and issue the command ‘Find it!’ at the same time. Do this for a few times and just let Fido have fun picking up the treats.
2. Have Fido sit or stay while you allow it to observe you hide a treat where it can see and reach. Go back to your dog and encourage it to find the treat. Also repeat this for several times.
3. Finally, have Fido stay stationary while you hide treats in places varying in difficulty. Have your dog work as hard as it can and don’t be too eager to help when they can’t find the treats. Show them only when they seem to lose interest.

Teach new tricks

You have no excuses this time. Using the usual time used for walks, reinforce basic commands or teach them tricks that you’ve seen that Jack Russel perform on YouTube.

Toys and games

How can anyone miss this out? Simple and everybody has fun. Even watching them play is a real joy on its own. It’s tiring to keep throwing and throwing toys for them to fetch (I may seem perpetually tired, but another reason to keep fetching games short is because the sudden stopping action when they pick up the toys causes stress on their joints.)

If you have more than one dog, why not make them play tug-o-war? Or if you have some cash to spare, get them some new toys that you can stuff treats into. Not only is it stimulating and can be hours of fun, it’s able to distract them and mitigate symptoms of separation anxiety that causes them to bark/whine excessively and lick/scratch themselves.

Shiatsu

Yup, massage. A great skill to learn that’ll help dogs relax and improve their well-being. It’s also a great activity to soothe a fearful dog during a thunderstorm.

Grooming, spa treatments  

Not because I’m a pet groomer, but because since you have the time, why not spend it grooming your pet? Not only does grooming keep your pet clean and healthy, it’s a time for bonding and getting your pet accustomed to the grooming process. Besides that, you can also prepare some DIY spa treatments to pamper your pet and at the same time treat skin ailments.

If you find any of the suggestions interesting, internet is really a great resource to find more information and solutions catered to your pet. But above all, stay safe and it won’t hurt staying indoors and keeping your activities minimal for a week (hopefully just a week). Sometimes  less is indeed more.