What to Do With Your Dog on a Rainy Day

Run scent work and training sessions indoors and your dog will end the day more settled than he would after a normal walk. This is not a consolation prize. Twenty minutes of nose work costs a dog more than an hour of walking on pavement, and a rainy day is one of the better opportunities you get to prove that to yourself.

The failure mode is treating a rainy day as a day off, letting the dog stew, and then getting frustrated when he is bouncing off the walls by four in the afternoon. He is not being difficult. Nothing happened all day.

Eight things that actually work indoors

• Scatter feed a meal. Throw his kibble across a rug or a room and let him hunt it. Fifteen to twenty minutes, costs nothing, and works better on carpet than on tile because the pile makes it harder.
• Find it, five hides. Put him in a stay or behind a door, hide five small piles of food around one room, release him with a search cue. Ten minutes. This is the one I use most because it builds a real cue at the same time.
• The box game. Food in a cardboard box under crumpled paper. Ten minutes, and the shape changes every time so the novelty never runs out.
• Muffin tin and tennis balls. Kibble in the cups, balls on top. Five minutes of problem solving out of things you already own.
• Towel roll. Sprinkle food on a bath towel, roll it up, let him unroll it. Thirty seconds to set up, five minutes of work.
• Stair free obedience. Two five minute sessions of sit, down, place, and hand targets in the hallway. Fifteen to twenty reps each.
• Trick training. Teaching something genuinely new is the most tiring mental work there is. Ten minutes, one trick, three days to get it.
• A long chew. Twenty to forty minutes of sustained chewing lowers arousal on its own. Save this one for the end of the day.

A rainy day schedule that works

The order matters more than the total. Spread it out and you get a dog who settles between sessions instead of one who is on all day.

1. Morning, breakfast as a scatter feed. Fifteen minutes, and it starts the day with his nose down instead of his head up.
2. Mid morning, five minutes of obedience. New skills go here, while he is fresh.
3. Midday, find it with five hides. Ten minutes, then crate or settle for a proper nap.
4. Afternoon, ten minutes of trick training. Then the box game with part of his dinner.
5. Evening, a chew and settle work. Mat down while you eat or watch something, paying every thirty seconds at first and stretching it out.

That is about fifty minutes of actual activity spread across a day, which is less than most people's normal walk time, and it will produce a more tired dog. The naps between sessions are doing as much work as the sessions.

What not to do

• Stair fetch. Running a dog up and down stairs repeatedly is hard on joints, especially for puppies and big dogs, and it winds him up rather than down.
• Hallway ball. Sliding, skidding, and hard stops on a slick floor is how dogs tear things. If you must throw something indoors, roll it slowly on carpet.
• Wrestling and tug all day. Fine in short bouts with rules. As a substitute for the walk, it just raises arousal for hours.
• Nothing at all, then a huge session at six. One big burst after a dull day is the pattern that produces the worst evenings.

If you do want to go outside anyway

Rain is fine for most dogs and a lot of them enjoy it. Twenty minutes of sniffing in the drizzle beats forty minutes of brisk walking on a dry day, so keep it short and let him use his nose. Towel him properly afterward, especially between the toes and in the ears on floppy eared dogs, and be aware that a wet dog on a slick kitchen floor is a slipping hazard.

The one genuine reason to stay in is lightning, and the second is a dog who is scared of the rain itself, in which case dragging him out is teaching him the wrong lesson and the indoor plan is the better call.

What it looks like when it worked

A dog who got enough mental work on a rainy day lies down on his own in the evening without being told, sleeps rather than dozing with his head up, and does not follow you room to room looking for something to happen. If he is pacing at eight at night, you did not do enough during the day, and the fix is usually one more ten minute nose work session rather than a longer walk tomorrow.

If evenings are the hard part in your house, the underlying skill is teaching a dog to switch off on cue rather than waiting for him to run out of energy. My free calmer dog blueprint covers the settle work, the sleep schedule, and the enrichment rotation. Download the Calmer Dog blueprint and use it on the next wet day.

Ready to train your dog?

Every drill in this article comes from the WorldWide K9 Academy course library. If you want the full step by step system, start with the $5 intro course.