It is raining. Or you are ill, or working late, or the pavements are covered in grit, or you simply cannot face it. And there is a dog looking at you.
The good news is that the walk is not the only lever, and it is not even the strongest one. Mental work tires a dog far more efficiently than physical work — a dog who has spent fifteen minutes solving problems will sleep like one who ran for an hour. Sniffing alone occupies a third of a dog's brain; it is genuinely hard labour for them.
So here are eleven things that work indoors, roughly in order of how much dog they use up per minute of your effort.
1. Make them work for every meal
The highest-value change on this list, and it costs you nothing extra because they were going to eat anyway.
Stop using the bowl. Browse the puzzle feeders and enrichment toys if you have none, then feed the meal out of a puzzle feeder so they have to manipulate it out piece by piece, or use a slow-feeder maze bowl so they at least have to work the tongue. Ten minutes of concentrated problem-solving, twice a day, for free.
2. Scatter feed
The lazy version, and almost as effective. Take a handful of kibble and throw it across a rug, or roll it up in a towel. The dog now has to sniff out every piece. Twenty minutes of nose work, zero equipment, and you can do it from the sofa.
3. Teach something new — anything
Not practising a known command. Learning a new one. The cognitive load of acquiring a novel behavior is enormous for a dog.
It does not need to be useful. "Touch my hand with your nose." "Go to your bed." "Put the toy in the box." Five to fifteen minutes is plenty — stop while they are still enjoying it, always end on one they get right.
4. The name game
Teach the names of individual toys. Start with one — say the name, give the toy, celebrate. Then two. Then ask for one by name from a pile.
This is genuinely difficult for a dog and it is why border collies are famous for it. Twenty minutes of this and most dogs will be asleep before you have made a cup of tea.
5. Hide and seek
Put them in a stay, hide somewhere in the apartment, call once, let them find you. Then hide better.
It is a nose game, a recall drill, and a bonding exercise at once, and it is the one dogs get visibly delighted by. Kids can run this one, which is its other virtue.
6. The cup game / muffin tin game
Three cups, one treat, shuffle. Or: a muffin tin, treats in some of the wells, tennis balls covering all of them. The dog has to work out which wells hold something and remove the ball to get it.
Cheap, endlessly repeatable, and hard.
7. Use the stairs (if you have them, and the dog is young)
Throwing a toy up a flight of stairs for a fit adult dog is one of the fastest physical burns available indoors.
Important: going up only. Do not encourage a dog to run down stairs repeatedly — it is hard on the shoulders and elbows. And skip this entirely for puppies, for elderly dogs, and for long-backed breeds like Dachshunds and Corgis, where it is a genuine spinal risk.
8. Tug — properly
Tug has a bad reputation it does not deserve. It does not make dogs aggressive. It is a superb physical outlet, and it is a training exercise in disguise if you build rules into it: they take it on a cue, they release on a cue, and the game stops if teeth touch skin.
Let them win, often. A dog who never wins stops playing.
9. A treadmill, for the honest days
Not a substitute for walks. A backstop for the days walks do not happen — illness, ice, a fourteen-hour work day, a healing owner.
A dog treadmill covers that gap, and for flat-dwellers a quiet adjustable-speed model matters because the alternative is a noise complaint. Introduce it slowly, with the belt off, with treats, and never tie a dog to one.
10. Chew — it is not nothing
Sustained chewing is genuinely calming for dogs; it releases endorphins and it is one of the few self-soothing behaviors they have. A long-lasting chew after a training session is what converts "stimulated" into "asleep."
This is the closer. Do the thinking first, then the chew, then they are gone for three hours.
11. Let them do nothing, on purpose
The counterintuitive one, and the one that fixes the most cases.
A lot of dogs described as "high energy" are actually chronically over-aroused — they have never been taught how to switch off, so they cannot, and every attempt to tire them out with more activity makes it worse. If your dog cannot settle even after a long walk, more exercise is not the answer.
Teach settling as a skill: a mat, a chew, a quiet room, and no engagement from you. Reward the calm, not the activity. Some dogs need to be taught that being bored is allowed.
Two warnings
Do not just add exercise to an anxious dog. You will build an athlete who is still anxious and now needs two hours instead of one. Enrichment and rest, not escalation.
And a puppy needs less than you think. The rough guide is five minutes of formal exercise per month of age, twice a day. Over-exercising a growing dog damages developing joints. For puppies, all of this should be brain work, not stairs.
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