Brain Teasers for Dogs E-Book

Christina Sondermann

• Herausgeber: Quiller
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 112

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

For a well behaved and happy dog, mental stimulation is as important as the daily walk. In this book you will find many creative brain teasers that you can implement quickly and easily at home and that really challenge your dog. Discover how much fun you can put into everyday objects and how small variations can turn even familiar games into a completely new gaming experience for your dog - endless fun is guaranteed!

Leseprobe

Contents

Welcome to the brain teaser workshop!

Why brain teasers are good for your dog!

Challenging the brain makes one feel good!

Get the brain into gear

Puzzle boxes – instruction manual

Bonus: Food or toy?

Test: What sort of puzzle-solver is your dog?

Hide and seek puzzles using covers

A lesson on cover games

Be creative with your covers

Giant covers

Cover board games

Building towers with covers

Stacking the covers

Covers turned upside down

The ultimate cover challenge

Bonus: Puzzle games as a science

Using paws and jaws to extract rewards

Dog pipeline

Biscuit drawer

Food downpipe

Sandbagger

Hide and seek

Mouse hole

Hou(n)dini

The dog fishing line

Bonus: Using bought brain teasers

Brain teasers for lateral thinkers

Spin the bottle

Crisp machine

Safe breaker

Open sesame!

The fence experiment

Bonus: Diploma in brain teaser invention!

Brain teasers … in everyday life!

About the author

Welcome!

Welcome to the brain teaser workshop!

This book contains a variety of original games, in which your dog will have to apply paws, nose and lots of gumption. Your four-legged friend’s brain will certainly be challenged. In order to receive a treat or his favourite toy, he will first have to crack various puzzles: operate a downpipe, try his luck with a board game, reel in a dog fishing line or – literally – think outside the box.

You already have all the necessary equipment for infinite puzzle fun at home. It lies dormant in the form of everyday household objects in the kitchen, cellar, garage and attic – waiting to be used as brain teaser equipment. There is no need to buy anything special, hardly any need to make anything (there are things even people with limited DIY skills can easily put together) and you can throw yourself straight into the fun.

It makes no difference whether you and your dog have any previous experience nor does it matter if you think of your four-legged friend as intelligent or not. It is also irrelevent whether you are both young or old, big or small, physically fit or less mobile.

If you are completely new to it all, then you will not only learn many new games, but you will also receive step-by-step instructions for each game. And if you are both old hands and have already tried a lot, then view this book as creativity training. Let yourself be surprised by how easily you can, with just the smallest variation to well-known ideas, offer your experienced player new challenges – and you will soon be creating all sorts of new brain teasers and brain challenges for your dog.

Why

brain teasers are good for your dog!

Challenging the brain makes one feel good!

Get the brain into gear

Puzzle boxes – instruction manual

Bonus:

Food or toy?

Test: What type of puzzle-solver is your dog?

Challenge

Challenging the brain makes one feel good!

Did you buy this book, because you and your dog want to have fun with activities? There are lots of reasons to play puzzle games.

Activities with gumption

It isn’t a secret that intellectual stimulus and mental work are among the things that contribute to a happy dog’s life. Puzzle games are a building block to enrich your dog’s daily routine in a simple way. It is good to know that just a few minutes of mental exercise can make him unbelievably tired.

Brain teasers are a popular sport!

Irrespective of your dog’s breed and individual differences, puzzle games are counted amongst those activities that enthuse all dogs without exception. On the one hand it is in the dog’s nature to acquire food with skilful use of the nose or paw. On the other hand, very independent dogs or those that are supposedly difficult to motivate thrive while playing puzzle games.

Doing puzzles and problem solving perfectly match their natural disposition. There have also been experiments that show that these dogs prefer to work out how to get a piece of food out of brain teaser apparatus than to just take it!

A dog that can solve puzzles is psychologically healthy

Who would have thought it: your dog playfully solves brain teasers – and as a result becomes more self-confident, even-tempered and dependable in everyday life! After every challenge he overcomes, he learns: ‘Whatever happens – I can do this!’

Incidentally, playing puzzle games trains important characteristics for surviving in everyday life, like the ability to solve problems (to react intellectually and flexibly towards everyday challenges), stamina (to persevere, and not get frustrated or depressed, even if the desired result doesn’t happen straight away), resilience (to endure trials, failure and even heart-stopping moments). Experts call such stimulation of physical health ‘empowerment’.

Anti-ageing for grey matter

The dog brain, like the human brain, is adaptable up until old age – and capable of being trained, like a muscle. ‘Use it or lose it’ or ‘Who rests, rusts’ is the motto here. Only those who challenge themselves mentally regularly stay mentally fit – and can, as a result, gain a cognitive cushion (effectively brain mass in reserve).

According to current findings this can also delay the onset of dementia – a good reason to offer your dog regular puzzle fun up until old age.

For the fun of it!

Speaking of fun, the mastered challenges will stimulate your dog and will give him many moments of happiness. And even if your four-legged friend solves the puzzles independently, these puzzle games are real communal experiences, which will bring you both even closer. You, as his trainer, are in the middle of the activity – you delight in his success, are proud of him and celebrate his cleverness.

Furthermore, your dog knows exactly to whom he owes this puzzling fun – you!

Brain into gear

Get the brain into gear

Brain teasers need to be ‘something new’ – when it comes to dogs that’s quite easy – and can be readily put into practice with household objects.

For us, it is simply an upside-down carton – for the dog, it is a completely new mechanism!

The brain: fit for new things!

Don’t worry: you don’t need to be a brain expert in order to throw yourself into, and enjoy, this puzzle fun. But you do need to understand the basic concepts of how to make these games and puzzles fresh and exciting and to keep updating them so your dog remains challenged. Brain teasers are about the new and the different that the dog has to process and solve, rather than something they already know well, which would be processed routinely.

Need an example? If you have a driver’s licence, do you remember how demanding and complex it was to learn how to drive? It took peak mental performance to concentrate on how to operate the clutch or put the car into gear. After a driving lesson, the brain was fried. And what is it like now? Presumably, you now drive using the proverbial ‘autopilot’. You hardly need to think about the sequence, as everything happens automatically. It would, however, be extremely easy to make driving a car into a brainteaser again, at least for some time. For example, imagine if you had to sit at the wheel of a car designed for driving on the other side of the road.

It is similar in dogs’ brain teasers: brain jogging takes place, as long as your dog still enjoys doing puzzles. Once the mechanism of a game is solved, then it gives many dogs pleasure to reach the treat the easy way, through repetition of the learned trick.

But then it is no longer a brain teaser! To get the dog brain back into gear, you would have to either change something in the original game or play a new game.

With dogs everything can be made new!

The good news is that presenting new and different things to dogs is a lot easier than for humans! That’s because dogs are sticklers for detail. They are world champions in linking the smallest intricacies – and are unbelievably bad at generalising. You have certainly already experienced exactly what this means in everyday life with your dog.

Do you know the feeling? You’ve practised a new trick at home and now want to show it off on the dog training ground – but there your dog acts as if you are asking him to do something completely unknown. However, all you did was to change the practice environment.

Or, until now, exclusively you have practised ‘Sit!’ with your dog. Now another family member tries the exercise – but the dog doesn’t seem to understand what is going on.

If even a small detail changes vis-àvis the learnt (often, the environment, the participating person, the person’s posture), this can trigger a lack of understanding, at least temporarily. The things we groan about in everyday training are perfect for puzzle fun.

Brain trainer in the household

You already know that stimulating your dog’s brain regularly with new things is important, but not difficult. And it doesn‘t have to be expensive! Everyday – and household – objects make ideal equipment. Cups, buckets, cartons, cardboard tubes and even furniture, in all kinds of shapes and sizes, are available, versatile and colourful, and together can be combined to make new challenges. And once you are really ‘played out’ you can just change them back to their original purpose. But rest assured – it could take longer than you think.

A desired side effect of this book is that not only your dog, but also you, become more and more creative, see a game in more and more things, and well-trodden games get new brainteaser kudos with a few small changes.

Puzzle boxes

Puzzle boxes – instruction manual

Read and get going is the motto! Skim these tips now – and study them in more detail if you have any questions while playing.

Which games do I start with?

You can play your way through the book as you feel like it and work out what you enjoy. Should particular previous knowledge be helpful for a game, this will be noted in the game instructions. Mostly, however, this is not the case. If you find a game idea interesting, but have doubts whether your dog will be able to crack the technique – perhaps, because he ‘never does anything with his muzzle’ or ‘never does anything with his paw’, don’t worry! If your dog knows ‘there is food (or a toy) and the chances of getting to it are good’ then he will use his tools automatically. You will find out how to reassure your dog, in the instructions.

Looks complicated, but it is possible for your dog to solve it without any previous experience!

Puzzle over it or step-by-step

Whatever the game, for the base variant there are always detailed step-by-step instructions. As a result, brain teaser beginners can also celebrate success straight away. However, if your dog is already a puzzle expert, do let him puzzle without a step-by-step setup. If he doesn’t manage to crack the game mechanism through his own thinking and trying, you can still go ahead step-by-step. You will find out what type of puzzle-solver your dog is and what size steps you need to take in the puzzle test on page 18!

When in doubt follow the fiver rule

In case you are asking yourself how quickly you can progress, if you follow the instructions step-by-step you can’t go wrong with the fiver rule: you complete each step 5 times one after the other.

› When 4–5 of these are successes, you can move on to the next step.

› If you only count 3 successes, start 5 further attempts in this step and then re-evaluate.

› If you only achieve 0–2 successes you must go back at least one step.

Remember: only move on when the previous step works effortlessly.

In one sitting or in stages?

Whether you play a game from the first to the last step in one sitting depends on how much of a challenge it is for your dog. You don’t need to invent a new game every time as your dog will already have learnt some of the stages.

Assistance through commands?

Your dog can already take things into his muzzle ‘on command’ or give his paw – but what if at this point he is not able to crack the technique of a game with the help of these tools? Could you not help him on to the right wavelength with a familiar signal (for example ‘Take it’ or ‘Paw’)? Of course you could. However, then the puzzle effect would also be lost and you would take away all your dog’s brainwork.

For this reason, resist the temptation and let your dog think for himself.

Remember: Brain teasers usually have more than one solution. Let yourself be surprised which technique your dog develops – and whether he solves the problem, for example, with his muzzle or paw.

How exactly should you praise and reward?

Don’t worry, the importance of timing in dog training is allowed for in the games almost automatically! Whenever your dog is successful, he will straight away have the reward in front of his nose.