How to teach your dog to chill out

Life is so much more relaxing if your dog is able to chill out. You can eat your dinner without your dog begging you for food. You can work from home without your dog distracting you by barking and whining for your attention. And you can take your dog out to cafés and pubs without your dog creating chaos and embarrassing you. As long as your dog can come back when you call them, walk calmly on-lead and chill out when you get home you’re probably gonna have a pretty easy life with your dog.

Teaching your dog to settle

You’ll need a blanket you only use for teaching your dog to settle. This will become the cue that lets your dog know it’s time to chill out. Then you’ll be able to take that blanket to a café or a friend’s house, put it down and your dog will relax. Choose a blanket that’s big enough for your dog to stretch out on fully so they’re comfortable. And ideally one that’s lightweight and easy to fold so you can put it in your bag for trips out.

Grab some treats, put the blanket on the ground in front of you. If your dog steps on the blanket at all, drop a treat. And keep dropping treats as long as your dog is on the blanket. Try to drop the treats when your dog’s not looking at you. This stops them staring at you begging for treats - which isn’t really chilling out. Start to look for any calmer behaviours (sitting, lying down or even just moments of stillness for really hyper dogs) and only drop treats when you see these calm behaviours. Slowly reward only the most calm behaviours. But don’t leave too long between treats or your dog will get frustrated and start to beg. If your dog really struggles to settle, give them a chew when you’re training. You’ll still need to drop treats to reward your dog for chilling out but a chew will help your dog to start to relax. At the end of each session, take the blanket away. If you leave it down all the time it won’t become your dog’s cue to settle.

Activities to help your dog chill out

Chilling out doesn’t just mean your dog doing nothing. If you think about how people relax, sometimes we snooze or meditate but we don’t tend to just stare at the wall doing nothing for hours. We usually do any activity to help us relax - we might craft, colour, play board games or just sit and watch TV. And it's the same for our dogs. Sometimes they’re happy to nap or just chill with us while we go about our day. But a lot of the time they want some kind of activity to do to help them relax.

There are some really easy enrichment activities that you can give your dog to help them chill out. Chewing, licking and sniffing are naturally calming activities for dogs so anything that involves these are great choices. You could spread yoghurt, peanut butter, mashed banana or wet food on a lick mat or a baking tray for your dog to lick off. You can hide treats or toys around the house for your dog to sniff out. There are a huge range of chews you can buy for your dog. Yaks milk, antlers and coffee or olive wood chews are my favourites because they last for weeks, not minutes, so your dog can always have them available when they want to chew something. It’s really important that you don’t try to make calming activities too hard for your dog. Otherwise your dog’s just gonna get really frustrated - which is the complete opposite of calm.

Bored dogs struggle to relax

It’s essential to make sure your dog’s had enough exercise and mental stimulation before you expect them to lie down and chill out. We want our dogs to genuinely feel relaxed and that’s not going to happen if they’re bored and fizzing with energy. Understimulated dogs will look for their own entertainment - and that usually ends up with them bouncing off the walls and destroying your home. Whereas dogs who are tired and fulfilled happily settle down and sleep.

The most obvious way of entertaining your dog is going for a walk. Walks aren’t just great exercise, if your dog spends a lot of their walk sniffing that’s brilliant (and exhausting) mental stimulation. And if your dog loves other dogs and people, meeting them on walks provides essential social interactions. Games like tug and fetch give your dog a chance to use a lot of energy in a short time while getting to have lots of fun with you. Keep games short (around 5 minutes max) instead of just throwing a ball for half an hour though. Long games might seem like they’ll be a great way to tire out your dog. But most dogs just get super hyped up and then struggle to relax afterwards.

You can entertain your dog at home too. Training together is amazing mental stimulation and gives your dog more social time with you. Learning new skills and practising old ones can be pretty tiring so most dogs are ready to chill out after they’ve done some training. You can practise your dog’s recall and loose-lead walking or try teaching them some cute tricks. Giving your dog something they’re allowed to destroy is an excellent way for them to use up some excess energy. If your dog doesn’t eat the fabric or stuffing it’s perfectly ok to let your dog destroy their toys. But that can get pretty expensive, so you can make your dog things to tear apart from your recycling. The easiest is to grab some cardboard toilet roll tubes and fold over one end, fill with treats and then fold over the other end.

Need more support with your dog’s training?

You can get personalised support to teach your dog to chill out as well as all the other skills they’ll need for your life together with the Your Adaptable Companion 1-2-1 dog training programme.

Written by Juniper Indigo, dog trainer in Tiverton and Exeter