Creating great new games for your dog is not only fun for your pet pooch but also good for them. As with humans, variety is the spice of life! There are plenty of things you can teach your dog and exciting ways to engage when out for a stroll in the park.

Ensuring your dog has toys that are natural, organic and without harmful chemicals is important when playing so check out these great Organic Pet Toys by Mushroom and Co and have fun with the games listed below. They may take longer to teach than a simple throw and fetch activity, but you’ll be amazed what can be achieved with just a little patience and some serious application.

Treasure Hunting

This is really great for groups of owners and dogs if you want to get a community together. All you need to do is create a route where you can add in challenges that the dogs need to complete. You give each owner a crib sheet and let everyone loose for an afternoon of fun.

Parks are great for this and give you plenty of scope to use your imagination. You can put in mini obstacle courses, get the dogs to find objects and introduce a host of other games with rewards. Of course, you don’t have to have a bunch of dogs vying for attention and causing chaos, you can simply go out with treats, hide them while your dog waits and then let them loose.

Hide and Seek

This is similar to treasure hunting but this time your dog has to find you. It’s a brilliant bonding game and involves your dog sitting and waiting until you call them. While this can make you look a little strange in the park, it’s a great way to build a connection with your animal and also gives both of you a decent amount of exercise compared to a normal, boring walk.

Picking Toys

Most of us take a ball or something we can throw for our dogs when we head out for a walk. As an alternative, you can teach them to pick up specific toys in a certain order and reward them when they get it right. A park gives you a bigger space in which to do this and you can even hide some objects away to make it more difficult. If you don’t mind taking a bag of goodies out with you on your walk it can be a great way to spend an hour or two.

Tug of War

One thing that dogs love doing is tugging on a toy and trying to pull it off their owner. While it can often seem like their teeth might pop out of their head, it’s great exercise, working all the muscles in the body.  And it gives you a strenuous work out at the same time. Combine this with throw and fetch activities for a little variation.

Find New Toys

Most of us tend to go for the standard toys such as a ball or tug rope for our dogs but there’s quite a big variety out there nowadays. Different breeds like different challenges so It’s worth playing around with a range of toys to find out which they like best. Some dogs love exploring and pulling apart objects especially if they have something that smells interesting inside. Others like hard toys that they can grind their teeth on.

Mushroom and Co Stock a great range of 100% Natural Rubber Dog Toys just like these Ovo Eggs - perfect for playing with your four legged best friend.

The most important thing you need to remember is that it needs to be fun for both of you. If your dog has a liking for a certain toy, that’s fine. It doesn’t stop you finding more imaginative ways to play though and you’ll be amazed how quickly your dog can learn.