Behaviour & Training

We've all seen the adorable twitch of paws and heard the odd woof whilst our dogs are sleeping, but do dogs really dream? Find out more and learn about what dogs dream about with Purina. All dog owners have seen and heard their pet’s adorable dreamy antics. Maybe you’ve heard a sleepy woof or seen them paddle their paws; perhaps you’ve even noticed a subtle growl. But do dogs really dream? And if they can, then what do dogs dream about? Do dogs dream? Let’s look at this scientifically: we know that human beings have dreams because research has shown that the electrical impulses in the brain can become active during sleep. Researchers have used similar techniques to monitor our canine companions, in order to determine whether those cute night time shuffles are evidence of dreams, or something different. Using an electroencephalogram to test for brain wave activity during sleep in dogs, scientists discovered that we have even more in common with our furry friends than we thought! It seems very likely that dogs do dream, just as we do. Dog sleep patterns and dreams You might already know that human beings have different stages of sleep during the night, and that dreaming is most likely to occur at a specific point in the sleep cycle. Incredibly, this seems to be true for dogs as well! Your pet will enter a stage of sleep known as ‘REM’, which stands for rapid eye movement. At this point, your dog’s breathing will begin to sound more irregular and their eyes will start to move around more rapidly. You may notice their eyelids flickering. It is during this stage of sleep that dog dreams are most likely to happen.

Classic games like ‘fetch’ are lots of fun for you and your dog, but exercise isn’t just about running around. Mental exercise is important too, as it can help fight boredom and teach your dog great new skills. Dog brain games can help keep your pet on their toes when it’s too rainy to play outside. They’re also great for dogs of any age – brain games for puppies challenge their developing brains and keep them learning new skills. They can also help keep adult dogs stimulated and may even help senior dogs stay alert and active. We’ve put together five of our favourite brain games for dogs. 1. Treasure hunt This is a great brain game to test your dog’s thinking skills! Hide pieces of your dog’s favourite treat around the house (or if it’s nice outside, the garden) and let them hunt for a tasty reward. Your dog will have to use their nose to scent out the prize. Every time you play this dog brain game, hide the treats in increasingly difficult places to keep things interesting. If your dog loves to follow scents (for example, if you have a scent hound) try leaving a ‘trail’ around the house or garden for them to follow. Just take a delicious-smelling treat, touch it on surfaces around the house in a continuous trail, and hide it at the end. 2. Brain training toys A really simple brain game for dogs involves hiding treats inside a special toy. There are many toys you can buy for this purpose – just put some of your dog’s favourite treat inside, and watch them try to release it. This may involve rolling their toy a certain way, squeezing it, or using sheer determination. Whichever toy you choose, it will help spread their treats or food out over a longer period of time, as well as keeping them occupied.

Enrichment is a word that’s used quite often when talking about ways to engage with your dog but what does it really mean and why is it so important? Enrichment activities will channel your dog’s natural behaviours in a way that can be encouraged and celebrated. It’s vital for a dog’s welfare that they are encouraged to be, well, DOGS! It provides both mental and physical stimulation and one of the reasons it’s discussed as part of training and behaviour modification plans is because it’s a means of reducing boredom, which can often lead to behaviours that humans consider undesirable. Would you rather your dog gets their chewing fun through a massive Kong* filled with nutritious and delicious food, or by dismantling your sofa? Walkies, while vital for your dog’s well-being isn’t enough. A slow-feeder, while probably a good thing for your dog, isn’t enough. One training session, while fabulous, isn’t enough for their mental well-being. Enrichment is something that needs to be considered each and every day. It’s not an ‘added extra’ when you share your life with a dog; it underpins their mental and physical health needs. If you don’t provide things to enrich their lives, they’ll find their own entertainment or coping mechanisms and we can almost guarantee you won’t like what they come up with. Getting to know your dog, taking into account their breed or breed mix and learning about their favourite things to do will help you choose the best ways to keep them occupied and entertained. Some dogs would rather de-stuff a toy than chew a bone. Some dogs need a few different toys and other dogs have a favourite. Some dogs love relaxing with a food toy and other dogs will enjoy scent games around the garden before snoozing. Most of the so-called ‘problem’ behaviours that are displayed by dogs and cause headaches for humans are actually perfectly normal dog behaviours that need an outlet, or they’re providing an outlet for a bored dog. My dog barks at everything. My dog keeps digging in the garden. My dog chews my favourite things. Dogs need to bark, dig and chew; it’s your job to provide a fun and interactive way for them to do what they need to do.

Whenever the weather is nice and the sun peeks through, it’s time for you and your dog to get back in the garden and make the most of the great outdoors. Finding the best garden dog toys will encourage your pet to exercise outside and provide vital physical and mental stimulation, and that isn’t only true for your pet! Research has shown that dog owners are fitter than the average person. Find extra motivation to get active and outside with your dog this summer, with this list of our all-time favourite garden dog toys.

Dogs don’t rely on vocal communication in the same way humans do, but it still forms a major part of the way they express themselves and their emotions to other dogs – and to their human family. There’s more to a dog’s vocal repertoire than a simple ‘woof’ – our canine companions make use of whines, yips, yelps, whimpers, grumbles, howls and growls in their communication. Some are even fond of a big hearty sigh! There are lots of reasons why dogs bark, but remember, barking may only seem excessive to us – barking in any form is all part of a dog’s nature!

Your dog's sense of smell is one of their most powerful senses, so it only makes sense to start nose training when they're puppies! Learn more about how to scent train your dog with our helpful guide and advice. For owners who really want to take their relationship with their dog to the next level, one of the best ways to do this is to focus on the most underappreciated of our dog’s senses… their incredible nose. That means it’s time for some puppy scent training! It’s probably because we don’t see the world in smell the same way that our dogs do, that we don’t understand how important the sense of smell is to our dogs. For that reason, we miss an entire way to interact with and stimulate them. It’s thought that the part of the dog’s brain that analyses smell is 40 times larger than ours. And if you compare our measly 5 million scent receptors to a Bloodhound’s 300 million, you can see that our noses are pretty pathetic in comparison! Scent is incredibly important to dogs – as much, if not more so, as sight and sound – and it tells them far more about their environment than we can ever begin to imagine. If we can incorporate this into some of our games and puppy training, we can discover a whole new way to interact with our pups. Scent training for dogs can be an incredibly enriching experience for both you and your puppy! You’ll probably find yourself wondering how to scent train a dog. Read on to find out some of our favourite puppy scent training games! Dog hide and seek This is a combination of scent work and basic problem-solving (and for some dogs, just trial and error!) but it is a fun starting point for nose work! Get someone to hold your dog, or ask them to wait, and then go and hide somewhere in the house. Don’t go too far at the beginning until your dog gets the hang of this fun new puppy scent training game. You can leave a trail of kibble or treats to start with to make it easier. When you are ready, your friend can let go of your puppy, and they can use their nose to follow the trail and discover where you are hiding.

It’s only natural for your puppy to nip, mouth and jump up, but when left unchecked these can turn into serious problems that could have been avoided. It can sometimes come as a shock to find out that your adorable new puppy does some things you would rather they didn’t – like nip, jump up and chew things. This isn’t them being naughty, bad or aggressive in any way. In fact, these are all totally natural behaviours for a puppy. For example, your puppy is chewing as part of their exploratory games; they have to chew in order to learn. It’s up to teach them what is available for chewing and what isn’t. So far, your puppy has only had their littermates and their mum to play and interact with so you and your family need to take on the role of teachers and playmates. This helps with the bonding process between you and your puppy and it’s important that you use the opportunity to encourage good habits from the start. Without this, your puppy will continue all the behaviours that they have grown up thinking are acceptable, and even desirable, into adulthood. They’ll just be bigger, stronger and have adult teeth which mean your dog could accidentally cause an injury or frighten someone with their boisterous behaviour. So when your pup comes home with you, start to teach the behaviours you’d like to see straight away. Remember though, they are not being ‘naughty’; they are just behaving the natural way that they have learned in their early weeks of life. To teach your puppy to behave appropriately needs gentle, positive reinforcement. This means that you encourage your puppy to do the things you want them to do and reward them when they do so, usually with a tasty, healthy puppy treat, so it becomes their new default behaviour. Always reward the behaviours you’d like your puppy to repeat and if your puppy displays behaviours you’d rather not see, use our dog training guides to teach them an alternative. Never punish your puppy verbally or physically. You will just make them fearful of you, it will damage your relationship, and it will not have the effect you desire. Puppy biting Puppies in a litter play together and this play will involve lots of rough and tumble and play-biting. This is how puppies learn to interact with each other and also how to limit their biting. If they bite too hard or the play gets too rough, the other puppies or their mother will stop playing with them, and so in this way, they are learning a valuable lesson about appropriate interactions with others. Puppy teeth are sharp and their jaws are weak. This means that while bites hurt, they don’t cause injury and this helps them to learn bite-inhibition from their littermates and their mum. As a result, however the occasional painful nip might happen while you and your puppy are playing. When your puppy comes home with you and is living in a human family, they need to be taught that games with humans don’t include teeth! You don't want puppy biting to be a continued behaviour into adulthood but you do want to teach them appropriate ways for you to play and have fun together: • Don’t play rough games with your puppy or push them around with your hands, this is just encouraging them to use their teeth to grab at you. • All interactions with your hands should be gentle and soothing; stroking, ear rubs, back-scratching etc. Your puppy should learn that your hands are good things and not tug toys or dog chews. • For gentle games of tug, use toys and not your hands. Your puppy needs to chew (and when they are teething, this is ever more important) but you should be encouraging them that toys are for chewing, hands aren’t. • Give your puppy safe toys to chew on, stuffed Puppy Kongs are great and you can even make your own toys using treats inside old cardboard toilet rolls that will let them bite and chew safely. Even with your best intentions, your puppy will occasionally nip you. First of all, don’t over-react. Yes, it may have hurt but if you tell your puppy off, get annoyed or shout at them, you will make them scared of you, lead them to mistrust your hands, and it will break down the relationship you have. Instead, you have several options and the option(s) you choose will depend on your puppy’s character, breed/breed mix and a bit of trial and error: • If it was a one-off accident, ignore it and carry on playing. Everyone makes mistakes. • If it wasn’t a one-off or if it happens again immediately stop playing and turn away from your puppy for 10 seconds so they know that if they use their teeth, the fun stops. This way they learn that if they want to play with you, they can’t use teeth. • When you return to play, introduce a toy into the game that your puppy can bite instead. • If the play biting continues, remove yourself totally from the game for a minute so your puppy knows that if they bite, you really will stop the game and also take away your presence. • Don’t go for any longer than a minute, and then when you come back to your puppy, carry on as before. Dogs don’t hold grudges and neither should you. • Sometimes play-biting happens because the puppy is frustrated, has too much energy or conversely isn’t getting enough sleep. Make sure they are getting enough positive interactions, problem-solving brain games, lots of chances to succeed and lots of opportunities for good quality undisturbed sleep. • Make sure everyone in the household does the same thing. The puppy will just get confused if one person lets them bite and the others don’t. • Supervise all interactions between your puppy and children to ensure that play doesn’t get too boisterous and to prevent play-biting mistakes. • Puppies will teethe the same way as babies from around 12 weeks old up to about six months of age. Gradually their baby teeth will fall out to be replaced by their adult teeth. At this time they may have some discomfort from sore gums and teeth and may need to chew more than usual. Make sure you have safe toys that they can gnaw on, both to distract them from chewing furniture or hands, and to help relieve them from any discomfort they may be feeling. There are even some puppy teething toys you can buy that can be put in the fridge to help cool sore gums. With some consistency and reward-based training, your puppy will soon learn that games with people need to be gentle and tooth-free.

Dog begging is a pleading gaze, big doe eyes, or a cute little whine. If your dog behaves like this every time you sit down to have a meal, you know your dog is begging for food or a delicious treat! Dogs are brilliant at devising new and interesting ways to get exactly what they want from their owners at mealtimes: more food. However, this can be difficult for you as an owner, especially if it happens every time you want to eat. Fortunately, dog begging can be prevented using a few simple steps. Causes of dog begging If your dog or puppy looks uncharacteristically unhappy or hungry when they beg then you won’t be alone. Dogs perfect this method of asking because it is so effective. Playing on your caring nature, they use their best acting skills in the hope of being treated to scraps from the plate. This clever technique means that your dog can often get more food without exerting much effort. The first thing to realise is that your dog’s begging is a learned behaviour from when they are a puppy, which can be trained out of them. Your begging dog has probably realised at some point that certain behaviours yield certain rewards. Whether it’s pawing, whining or barking, if you reward your puppy begging with what they expect, they will only continue to behave in this way. Puppies don’t just beg for food, you may also witness your pet begging for affection, playtime or walks. You probably didn’t realise that you were teaching your puppy that begging was effective, but by giving in to their demands, you may have inadvertently promoted their behaviour, which will carry on with them through to adulthood.

When we see a dog, our brain produces positive emotions and we don’t think twice before declaring our undying love, but how do we show our dogs this? Find out how to show your dog you love them with Luna. ‘It’s the month of love, Luna, the time of year when we shower our favourite people with cards and gifts so that they know how much they mean to us.’ That’s odd, thought rescue dog, Luna, safe in the knowledge that her humans know exactly how much they mean to her and she has never bought them a card or a gift since the day they brought her home. That’s not to say that Luna, hadn’t received gifts and even an edible card on one particularly memorable Valentine’s Day, but that’s not how she knows she is loved, far from it. The feeling of love is all in her head. Literally! If you believe that the chemistry between you and your dog is real, then science agrees with you. It’s all in your head, too. Our ‘happy hormones’ are created in our brain. The well-documented trio consist of dopamine, which is released when there’s an initial attraction, as a result our serotonin levels increase and then oxytocin is produced. When we see a dog, our brain delivers a rush of positive emotions and we don’t think twice before declaring our undying love to the cute furball. It’s chemical; love really is all in our head. One of the ways that we can get a rush of oxytocin is to make eye contact with someone we care about. The brilliant thing about making eye contact with our canine family members is that they get a rush of oxytocin too. Please don’t race home and stare into the eyes of your dog, that probably won’t make either of you feel great, but do think about the interactions that you have with your dog and the ways you can use eye contact in your everyday communication. For me, calling my dogs’ name means that I’d like them to look at me, I just want their attention. I don’t use names for recall, but that’s a blog for another day! Once I have my dogs’ attention, I can ask them to do any of the other things I’ve taught them and the burst of oxytocin delivers immediate positive emotions, for both of us. But, is the oxy-love chemical enough? Calling our dog’s name and looking at each other isn’t enough to build the relationship we want, is it?

When we’re looking for coping mechanisms, we have to remember the basics; exactly what we do for our dogs; water, regular meal times, exercise, enrichment, rest… and kindness. This month, we’re taking a practical approach to building resilience with the help of our dogs. You’re living with someone that’s no stranger to having restrictions placed on their day-to-day activities. You know that we’re really just living our dogs’ life, don’t you?! For those of us with no choice but to stay at home, we’re limited as to what we can eat, our exercise routine has been determined by someone else and our freedom of choice has been taken away; for our safety. When we’re looking for coping mechanisms, we have to remember the basics; exactly what we do for our dogs; water, regular meal times, exercise, enrichment, rest… and kindness. In these challenging times, our dogs are an incredible source of companionship and comfort, but it’s not their responsibility to make us feel better. We owe it to them, and to ourselves, to take positive action so that we can both benefit from the time we have together. Your dog is about to become your greatest teacher, if you let them. Create a daily routine It might sound boring, but we have to create a daily routine and stick to it. We’re all navigating a new reality that we didn’t ask for and we weren’t prepared for. With that comes a wave of change and uncertainty, two things we’re not designed to cope with. For many of us, the fear and uncertainty can open old wounds and trigger responses that we believed were long buried. We feel like we’re spiralling out of control and that in itself can be terrifying. That’s a perfectly normal response, so your only job is to go easy on yourself, exactly as you would for your dog if they were frightened or anxious. When you brought your dog home, whether as a pup or through rescue, they were in unchartered waters. They were navigating a new reality and I have no doubt that you did your absolute best to show them that you could be trusted, that they were safe and you started the way you meant to go on. Do the same for yourself, show yourself the same level of care and understanding.

It's becoming more and more common for dogs to live in urban areas and of course, this presents its own unique challenges. Find out how to make dogs in the city comfortable with our guide. City living is more and more common these days – and not just for people, but for dogs, too. Caring for a dog in the city – whether you live there or are just visiting – presents its own unique challenges. We all love our dogs and want them to be as happy and comfortable as possible when we’re exploring the urban landscape. Read on to find out our tips for making sure you and your pup are feeling in tip-top form when you’re out walking through the city. Start young Every dog owner (especially ones that have trained a puppy) knows that when it comes to getting your pup used to things, it’s best to start as young as possible. If you’re a puppy owner, it’s a logical conclusion that a happy puppy in the city means a happy future dog in the city. Good socialisation is paramount; when you live in an urban environment, it’s especially important to get your puppy used to the unique sounds, smells and sights of the city. Even if you can’t start young, good socialisation is equally important; get out and about with your dog to get them used to the city. Training a dog in the city Training is important for any dog, but if you have a dog in the city, it’s arguably especially so. Any dog who is regularly out and about in the city should know at least a few key commands. We recommend familiarising your pup with the following: • Sit: A classic, it’s a great command for any dog in the city to master. If you want your dog to be able to wait quietly for you, or travel safely on public transport, it’s good to teach them how to ‘sit’. • Wait: Following on from ‘sit’, ‘wait’ is a key command for your pup to learn. With more road traffic and foot traffic in the city, it’s especially important for your dog to know how to ‘wait’. This way, you can halt them if they look to be in any danger of wandering into harm’s way. • Leave: If you have a dog in the city, you never know what they could find on the pavement. City streets have the unfortunate tendency to collect litter, food remnants, and the like. ‘Leave’ is the star command here – if you have it well-practiced, and your dog picks up anything that looks unsafe, it’s easy to tell them to drop it. Be sure to give them a well-deserved treat to tell them how good they’ve been! • ‘Curbing’: This term means encouraging your dog to do their ‘business’ on the curb of the pavement, rather than in the middle, where people tend to be walking. To do this, when you see your pup sniffing for a place to go, gently lead them towards the curb. If you’ve worked on encouraging them to pee or poop with a particular word, say this as you do so. After a while, they should get the idea!

Thinking of new and exciting games to play with your pooch can be difficult, especially if you’ve exhausted the thrills of ‘hide and seek,’ and want to play a more exciting game than ‘fetch.’ With our list of outdoor dog games, you can be more adventurous at playtime and enjoy the great outdoors come rain or shine! 1. Teach your dog to catch a Frisbee Playing flying disc, or Frisbee, is a great alternative to throwing a stick or a ball and it’s an excellent form of exercise too! If your dog is already good at catching toys and bringing them back to you, they’ll be quick at learning how to play with a Frisbee and the game will be even more fun for the both of you. All you need to get started is a Frisbee and the great outdoors! Begin your game by throwing the Frisbee lightly, and once your dog has gotten used to catching and retrieving you can start to increase the height and the distance of each throw. This outdoor dog game is great if you’re short on time and aren’t able to go on a long daily walk. The quick bursts of energy spent running to catch the Frisbee and bringing it back will tire your enthusiastic dog out in no time!