Hi all, I’m hoping someone can help. We have a 5 month old puppy who doesn’t seem to enjoy playing. He’s not interested in playing with us or independently. We’ve tried to teach him tug of war and fetch but he’s just not interested, even when treats are involved. We’ve also bought him lots of different types of toys but after 5 minutes he’s bored. He definitely doesn’t have a favourite toy. We try to make the toys interesting by making all the fun noises, throwing it around and even playing with it ourselves. It doesn’t seem to work. Not being entertained by toys makes passing the time tough as we’re obviously limited on how much we can exercise and feed/ treat him. Additionally, we’ve invested in lots of food puzzle toys and kongs (including freezing the Kong) but again they don’t last long as he works them out easily. Does his interest in play come with age? Any insight and help would be gratefully received!
omg... I know this is not the response you are looking for but maybe it helps, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. My almost 5-month-old lab is the same... she ignores every single toy after a few minutes then start looking for trouble... biting wall, wall corners, chairs, everything... I've been trying to use the attention noise to distract her but it does not work, she completely ignores everything whenever she starts to chew on something... She prefers sleeping rather than chew on proper things or playing with me... She is very social tho, loves strangers and dogs... I wonder if this is just a phase...
Training sessions are great ways to entertain your puppy! My guy loves it. When he was very young (8-10 weeks) we were only able to do max of 5 minutes per training session. But he's now 5 months old and we could easily do 20+ minutes per session. We are very careful with what our dog eats and how much because we do not want him to become overweight. So, we usually put aside some of his breakfast kibble to use for training during the day. We put it in a little container and use that to train. Another fun thing to do is hide treats (or plain kibble) around the house for your puppy to find. This will absolutely exhaust them! He also goes to daycare twice a week which he loves. And that exhausts him and he's tired the day afterwards as well.
I think it’s a bit of a myth that dogs/pups play independently. I have had 5 dogs of 3 different breeds, none have done that. They settle in the house after training or exercise. Sometimes dogs that that chew or destroy are just bored. Training at 5 months is exhausting and Meg was shattered after a good session. As she got older training combined with off lead exercise meant she was and still is a calm easy dog at home. If you up the training and exercise you will find your dog settles easier and does not need to self entertain, so you can get on with work or chores. I hope that makes sense.
