chihuahua

Chihuahuas are a small dog breed known to be graceful, charming, and sassy. Chihuahuas come in two different types, those with long coats and those with smooth coats. Chihuahuas tends to be mainly indoor dogs that do well in smaller spaces and with children. Because chihuahuas are so small, they don’t need a lot of exercise and actually prefer to curl up and cuddle with their owners. They do, however, love to run and play and the following ideas can help keep your chihuahua occupied with fun and games     

1

Play hide and seek. You can play hide and seek with multiple people and multiple dogs if you want, or you can play it alone with just your chihuahua. First, tell your chihuahua to stay in one place (he’ll need to know this command) and then go hide somewhere in your house. Once you’re hiding, call your chihuahua’s name so he’ll come find you.^[3]

• You may need to say your chihuahua’s name a couple of times if he isn’t use to the game yet.
• If your chihuahua doesn’t know the stay command, or isn’t good at it, you might need another person to hold him in one spot while you hide. Once your hidden, that person can let him go and he’ll come find you.
• Make sure you only hide in place where your chihuahua can get to or is allowed.

2

Teach your chihuahua to help clean up. If your chihuahua has a lot of toys, chances are they end up all over the house throughout the day. A great game to play with your chihuahua at the end of each day is to have him fetch his toys and put them away in the toy box.

• Such a game will require some training in order for your chihuahua to learn certain commands.
• For example, you may want to use the command “clean-up”  your chihuahua needs to find all the toys and bring them to you.
• Another example is to teach your chihuahua a command, like “in the basket” to tell your chihuahua he needs to place each toy in the toy box.

3

Have a tug-o-war with your chihuahua. Either using a rope (there are rope toys of all sizes specifically made for dogs) or another favourite toy, play tug-o-war with your chihuahua. Basically you want to grab the toy at the same time as your chihuahua and not let go. Your chihuahua will then tug on the toy to try to get it away from you.^[5]

• If you have more than one chihuahua, you might even be able to teach them to play tug-o-war with each other. Or they might just figure it out themselves when they both want to play with the same toy at the same time!

        Do you like chihuahuas? Let know if you do!