How to Keep Your Dog Happy When You’re Working From Home

We’re all spending a lot of time at home. Reading the news is stressful, learning new skills to work on your job from home is stressful, and we’re starting to show the effects of that stress. For your dogs, changes in their normal daily routine can be stress inducing. While they love spending time with us, our anxiety is likely palpable and it will change our dogs’ behavior. How can we keep our dogs happy during this time and make sure we’re managing their stress as well as ours?

Establish a Routine

Think about what your old routine looked like. You probably had morning coffee and work preparation time that your dog casually watched. Maybe you took a walk around the block and then fed your pup. Maybe your kids had a short play session with your dog. And then you went to work. What did your dog do during that time? Nap in their crate? Nap on the couch? Nap by the door? I’m guessing it involved napping. When you got home, your dog probably had a chance to exercise. Then it was time to eat again and then back to bed for the night.

Oatley practicing the napping portion of his daily routine. Dogs need an average of 12-14 hours of sleep a day!

Naps are few and far between when you’re working from home. Even more so if your kids are also learning remotely from home. Notice that I’m placing an emphasis on naps! The daily amount of sleep a dog needs changes based on their age, but on average, a typical adult dog needs 12-14 hours of sleep per day. This number increases for young puppies and elderly dogs. If your dog is sleeping less than normal, you will see changes in their behavior. These changes may manifest as behaviors that can look like boredom, such as pacing and roaming. Changes in behavior may also look like over-excitement, such as jumping and nipping in adolescent dogs.

When you’re establishing a routine with your dog, make sure you’re building in adequate time to sleep. This will involve managing spaces in your house to be conducive to relaxation. Do you close yourself in a room to take calls? Does your dog relax during your phone calls and relish time away from the rest of the family? Take them with you! If they get too excited while you take calls, work on training calm behavior during calls, but consider closing them out of the space in which you make your calls so that they’ll nap instead.

What are the other activities in your dog’s routine that they’ve come to expect at a certain time? Feeding times and quiet times such as when they normally settle for the night should be adhered to. Make sure the kids know that the dog needs their own space while they’re eating and to not disturb them once they are relaxing in bed for the night. These changes will go a long way toward decreasing stress overall in your household. Our schedules are changing everyday, but be kind and consider how we can stick to a similar routine every day for our dogs. This includes adding in mental stimulation and exercise.

Enrichment and Exercise

Your dog normally gets exercise through a variety of outlets, this could be from walks with a dog walker, you walking him around the block, or through fun hikes and activities. Exercise is a form of enrichment, which is a term for sensory experiences and activities we can add to our dogs’ lives that stimulate natural behaviors. Sniffing the varieties of smells on a walk is an excellent form of enrichment, it exercises your dog both physically and mentally.

Jojo on a sniffy walk. Prioritize physical exercise where dogs can do a lot of sniffing, as this can be stress relieving.

While you’re working from home, continue to provide your dog with their normal exercise outlets to the best of your ability. Get them out and play a short game of fetch and take a walk around the block. Taking walks specifically to find interesting smells is also an excellent activity that you can do safely at a local park or on a hiking trail. This type of activity also has an overall calming effect and should help your dog decompress from any additional stressors they may be experiencing.

While you’re home, think of ways to make your dog’s food last longer. I typically reserve a portion of my dog’s meals to add to puzzle toys and search games throughout the day. Additionally, make your recyclables work for you! Save those boxes, paper bags, paper towel tubes, and safe plastic bottles and make some DIY puzzle toys. This type of game is a form of enrichment that activates hunting skills in your dog. You can work in this type of food game to a regular day’s routine, but also consider using them as a reward for good behavior or to prevent problem behaviors.

Boredom Busting and Problem Behaviors (Training)

You’ve made sure your dog has time to take naps, you’ve taken them for a walk during your morning break, and you’ve given them a puzzle toy. Then they start barking during your Zoom call. What do you do?

Our dog’s stress may manifest as what looks like boredom, but if we don’t address the problem behaviors that may be cropping up right now, they will get worse. To prevent inappropriate behavior before it starts you can establish certain cues to use throughout the day to help indicate to your dog what your expectations are.

One cue to teach to any dog, even if you aren’t spending tons of time at home, is a “go to mat” cue. This cue means to go lay down on your bed and stay there calmly until released. On a typical day at home, I use this while I’m seeing appointments virtually, when I am writing emails on the couch, and when I am prepping food for dinner.

Lucy practicing her go to mat behavior. This behavior can be cued and then rewarded, which can prevent boredom behaviors such as barking.

To start to teach this behavior, pick a comfortable non-slip bed or mat for your dog to lay on. With your dog in the room, stand in front of the mat and stare at it. When your dog interacts with the mat by looking at it, sniffing it, or stepping toward it, drop food on the mat (ideally so they have to move further onto the mat to get the treat). After they eat the reward treat, you can toss a treat away from the mat so that you can do multiple repetitions of this exercise. If your dog has an automatic sit and automatic down behavior, you’re in luck, because that is the next step. After a few successful repetitions where they begin to quickly gravitate to the mat, you can reward them for their interaction with the mat and then pause. Wait to see what they’ll do next. If they sit or lie down on the bed, give them a jackpot of a few treats on their bed. Continue in this way until after you toss a treat to reset them they quickly run back to the mat and lay down. As you move forward, you can add duration to this behavior by feeding them intermittently as they remain on the bed. It will soon be one of their favorite spots!

Now, before you start a conference call, cue your dog to their bed, then give them a puzzle toy. Ideally it is a frozen puzzle toy that might last the whole call, but you can also just intermittently reward your dog for staying on the bed. Set that pup up for success by telling them what you’d like them to do and then rewarding them for doing it. If your dog is barking at you at other times of day, you can interrupt them and ask them for this or another behavior they know well. Reward them after they do the behavior you’ve asked for. Boredom barking can add to the human stress in the household, but the more you reward alternative behaviors, the less the barking happens.

Don’t Forget to Spend Time Away

Notice a part of your normal routine I haven’t mentioned yet? Some dogs dread it, some dogs relish it, but most dogs have to experience time spent alone without their people. When you are back to spending less time in the house with your dog, you may have difficulty with that transition. To prevent your dog from developing an aversion to you being away, schedule in some time for your dog to spend time alone. You can either close them off in a space away from you and your family for a couple of hours a day, or you can make trips out of the house frequently enough that it is part of your regular routine . I’d recommend that your dog spends time alone daily in some capacity.

If your dog is already experiencing difficulty with spending time alone, there are a few things you can do to help right off the bat. First off, save those enrichment games you planned and only give them to your dog when they are alone. Make sure really good things are happening in conjunction with your departure such as special treats or activities. Work your way up to spending more and more time away from your dog, always continuing to pair it with your dog’s favorite things!

Build It, Then Stick to It!

Build a routine that works for everyone in your family. Make sure it still has all the most important components like sleep, mental exercise, and physical exercise for your dog. Use training to improve problem behaviors that crop up, then reward your dog for their ability to do those behaviors while you’re working from home. Save those enrichment activities for practicing time away from your dog and rewarding them for not screaming during Zoom calls. Building and then sticking to a routine will decrease the overall stress in not just your dog, but in your family as well.

---