3 Brilliant Ways To Play Hide And Seek With Dogs

My dogs love hide and seek games! It only takes a few minutes out of my day to help them play, and they enjoy the excitement and mental challenge! Plus, it’s great exercise and you’ll help your dog crush a solid sit/stay!

3 ways I play hide and seek with dogs:

Play Hide and Seek – Hide Yourself!

It’s so fun to hide myself and ask my dogs to “come find me!” They run through the house, room to room, wondering where I am. I call out every now and then to keep the game going, making sure to not wait so long that my dogs becomes frustrated or worse…. bored. The object of the game is FUN!

I hide under the bed, in a closet, behind the shower curtain, behind the drapery, behind a door. Once I even hid in a box. It was a pretty big box, I don’t fold as easily now as I did when I was younger!

We play long enough to run through 3, maybe 4 hiding places then we call it a game. I always stop a hide and seek game before my dogs get bored, that way they remember it as something really fun and are eager to play again!

Tips and Benefits

Tip: You’ll need a human to help you play this hide and seek game unless your dog has a good grasp of “stay”. Ask your human helper to hold the dog until you give the go-ahead to begin, then release the dog to go find you! Your human helper can walk along and engage with the dog: “Where is she? Where did he go? Can you find her? Find him! Find him!”

Tip: In a multi-dog household, you may elect to crate or sequester other pets in a different room if you are concerned that this high-arousal play will create a conflict. I play this hide and seek game with two dogs together, but they got along really well.

Tip: Help your dog succeed! Start with easy hiding places, and build up to more challenging ones. However, if your dog is not finding you within a minute or so, help them out! Call out to re-orient them to the sound. You want them engaged and having fun. You want them to love hide and seek!

Benefit: Your dog gets to problem solve using their senses, like their ears and nose. Also, the more often you play the game, you’ll notice the dog will remember all of your prior hiding places! My dogs will go through the house systematically, “nope, not behind the shower curtain, nope, not behind the chair, nope, ……” etc. It’s fascinating to watch them use a process of elimination until they find me.

Benefit: this is a great way to practice advanced sit/stays until the skill is rock solid!

Benefit: It is GREAT exercise!

Play Hide and Seek With Dogs Using a Special Toy

When you play hide and seek using a dog toy, you have more hiding places, elevating the challenge!

I use a special toy that I dedicate to the game, and the only time my dogs see this toy is when we are about to play hide and seek together. When the game stops, the hide-and-seek toy goes back in the closet until the next time.

Often, I use rope dog toys for hide and seek games. ROPE TOYS??? Yes. because this toy is available ONLY during hide and seek games with my dogs, it is a safe use of the rope toy. When hide and seek stops, the rope toy goes away.

You could select a special stuffed animal toy, if you wanted. As long as it has its own unique characteristics and your dog will immediately know you are about to play hide and seek when they see this toy! Make it a special toy!

Tips and Benefits

Tip: When using a toy, I start easy, with part of the toy visible, and the other part hidden. As my foster dogs develop their thinking skills, I gradually up the level of difficulty. I can also spray a scent on the toy so that the dog can use their nose to find the toy, similar to scent work games.

Interested in the sport of scent work as a separate activity? Click here for a supply list to build your own scent work kit!

Tip: When playing hide and seek with dogs using a toy, I reward the dog for finding the toy by playing a brief game of tug, and I can practice the “give it” or “release” command by exchanging the toy for a treat. Then we can begin a new round of hide and seek!

Benefit: You get many more hiding places!

Benefit: Another great way to practice sit/stays, and you also can help your dog practice releasing or giving a toy to you. Games are a great, fun way to interject brief training practice into your activity.

Play Hide and Seek With Dogs Using Kibble or Treats

Sometimes, I hide food when playing hide and seek games with my dogs.

I like using food when I want to help my dog slow down how fast they eat, or I want to make mealtime more interesting. Sometimes I use treats, but since most of my treats are chopped up fruits and vegetables, this creates a mess. Training dog treats are a great alternative, each treat is small and low-calorie.

The game is similar to hiding a toy, although you want to hide food in places where there won’t be any damage to your personal property. Some kibble and some processed dog treats have a higher fat content and I’ve had a stain happen when food was left to sit too long. (in other words, the dog didn’t find it, and I forgot where I hid it. Ew. )

Tips and Benefits

Tip: Choose your hiding places carefully – if you forget where you hid the food, you could contribute to pest problems, stains and odors, or, if you have dogs who resource guard food, a scuffle.

Tip: Definitely play this game with one dog at a time.

Tip: when using kibble from your dog’s daily portion, create piles of varying sizes. Sometimes I pile 10 pieces of kibble in the same hiding spot, and sometimes I only leave one piece of kibble.

Tip: Use objects to hide the kibble in: under a cup, under a small box, in a shoe (if your dog doesn’t slobber much, EW!) rolled up blankets or towels, your snuffle mat, etc. Sometimes, I find that after I’m done hiding all the food, I’ve created an obstacle course of sorts! My dogs love it!

Benefit: Mealtime becomes fun!

Benefit: Use as an alternate way to feed a foster dog that eats too fast. Slow-feed bowls can become boring, quick.

There you go! Three ways I play hide and seek with my dogs. It’s a perfect rainy day activity or something to do when it’s too cold or too hot to exercise your dog outdoors. It’s a great way to build your relationship with your dog, and a fun way to help them practice skills and provide them with fun mental stimulation.