How long has it been since you´ve played Hide & Seek?

At the risk of sounding like I´ve lost my mind, I have to share with you something that I´ve done with my dogs for years…play hide & seek. When the weather is too hot or too cold for outside exercise, I´ve always turned to this game to exercise and work the brains of my pets (I say pets because my cat always joins in the hunt as well).

So here´s how it works…ask your dog to sit and stay in one room of the house and you take off into another room to hide. Start off hiding in easy to find places like scrunched down beside the couch. They tend to want to follow you as you are trying to hide so it might take a helper to teach the rules of the game at first (sit, stay). Get secure in your location then call your dog (or cat). When they find you praise them like you´ve just won the lottery! As time goes on you can hide in more challenging locations which encourages your pet to use their instincts to find you. If you´ve got more than one pet – the challenge gets to be who finds you first.

You will take great pleasure in watching your dog(s) play this game; their noses in the air trying to get a ´scent´ of you – their eyes scanning the room for you. It´s so much fun to watch a dog using their natural abilities. And then the joy that comes when they find you. Unlike humans who might be jealous when one wins the game and another loses – all of your pets are excited when you´re ´found´. Don´t think this game is just for dogs either. Amazingly my cat would sit with the dogs during the wait while I hid. Then he would casually walk right to the room I was in – sitting at the door or across the room from me – taking in all the activity.

Get off the couch and play with your pets! Hide and Seek provides some exercise and uses their brain too. Life seems to pass us by too quickly – stop for a little while and enjoy a simple game you played as a kid with your pet. Don´t let a busy life cause you to feed then some food simply because it´s convenient either. Feed them high quality, U.S. ingredient pet food. They are a gift to our life – take good care of them and enjoy them.