05/09/2026
Your dog doesn’t need to be entertained all day. 🧠
Short, fast-paced training sessions like this are one of my favourite ways to break up the day — especially for adolescent dogs, or dogs who tend to live life at 100%.
This entire session was only around two minutes.
We’re working through sit, down, stand and middle fairly quickly, keeping the dog engaged, thinking and moving. It doesn’t need to be complicated, and it definitely doesn’t need to be a 30-minute obedience session to be worthwhile.
A couple of minutes of focused training gives them something productive to do with their brain, provides an opportunity to practise behaviours they already know, or are learning, and adds a little burst of mental stimulation to an otherwise uneventful part of their day.
But the important part is what happens afterwards.
Training doesn’t have to lead into another exciting activity.
After a short session like this, I’ll often implement a period of rest or offer a quieter form of enrichment — a chew, lick mat, scatter feed, sniffing activity, or something else that encourages the dog to come back down.
For intense or easily over-aroused dogs, I don’t want to spend the entire day trying to physically exhaust them.
I want them to experience a rhythm of activity → fulfilment → rest.
Appropriate physical exercise, mental enrichment, clear boundaries and expectations, alongside intentional downtime all play a role.
Because the goal isn’t to create a dog that’s so exhausted they *have* to switch off.
It’s to create a dog that has had their needs met and knows how to switch off. 🐾
