How to get a dog to relax after a walk?
Izabella Gulgowski
2025-06-23 11:50:29
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Reward relaxed behaviours. To begin with you may just need to reward your dog for any behaviour that doesn’t involve staring at you, pulling on the lead, or barking. Sit quietly on a chair with your dog on the lead and a blanket on the floor. Drop tiny bite-size treats to your dog as a reward for settling down on the blanket. Don’t say anything to your dog while doing this. Gradually reward more relaxed behaviours. When your dog is relaxed, start increasing the time they must be settled before you reward them. Once your dog starts to get the hang of it and is shifting their weight so they’re comfortable and relaxed, you can start practising with them off lead.
Danielle Maggio
2025-06-14 17:41:09
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Teaching a dog that won’t settle to lie down when asked on a mat or dog bed gives them and you time to switch off and chill out. Giving time for your dog to settle and relax allows Glutamate, which is linked with brain development, cognition, learning and memory, to rise. It also releases Dopamine, which makes them feel good. This exercise should be calm and collected, practice at a time when your dog is already tired, encouraging calm behaviour from your dog. Place a mat, blanket or a towel on the floor so the dog has somewhere comfortable to lie down. Allow the dog to go over to the blanket and investigate. Reward the dog whenever they investigate or go near the mat. Build up some duration for lying on the mat, do this by delaying reward for a couple of seconds initially and then increasing this at your dog’s pace.
Krystina Frami
2025-06-14 15:52:25
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You can find our top suggestions below: Scent work – structured scent discrimination training is a great way to give our dogs an outlet for behaviours that come naturally to them. On-lead walks – while we all love to see our dogs stretching their legs and running free, they can be a bit like a kid in a candy shop and may find it incredibly difficult to calm down off lead. Popping the lead back on allows us to slow our dogs down. Change up the structure of your walks – it’s so easy, both for us and for our dogs, to get into a habit. Don’t walk as far – while it’s important to provide our dogs with physical exercise, this shouldn’t be at the expense of everything else. You don’t always have to be covering ground – a shorter walk, meandering around a familiar area so your dog is able to feel secure, let their guard down and mooch can be a wonderful way to break the cycle and bring your walks down a gear. Settle training – we spend a lot of time teaching our dogs things we want them to do, but investing some time teaching our dogs how to settle and relax is not only a useful skill for our convenience but is also an invaluable thing for our highly strung dogs.
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