Hide and Seek is one of my favorite rainy day dog games. With very little effort on my part, I can keep both dogs busy running around the house for five or ten minutes at a stretch searching for a hidden toy. Hide and seek can be played with hidden children (visiting pre-schoolers are perfect!), biscuits, balls, or toys. I like to play with squeaky toys because then I can hear when the dogs have found them. Of course, the item has to be valuable enough that your dog will want to find it, so give the kids some special treats or use a toy that is normally kept in the closet.

A solid sit or down stay is a pre-requisite for hide and seek. Do a test—can your dog hold a stay while you place a treat on the floor a few feet in front of him? If so, you are good to go. If not, revisit your dog’s stay training and gradually work up to this—can he stay while you hold a cookie at nose height two feet away for a count of one? Yes! and reward. Now hold the treat six inches lower—if he reaches for it, pull the treat up and away and remind him to sit and stay. Keep at it until the stay is solid.

To start teaching hide and seek, ask your dog to stay and place a toy in plain sight a few feet away, then release him to find it (OK! Find it!). Do this a few times in a row each time with the toy a little further away. Next, set up your dog in a stay facing a doorway. Step into the doorway and let him watch you place the toy just out of sight—he can see your arm placing the toy on the ground but can’t quite see the toy. Once again, release him to find it. Please don’t help! If he doesn’t find it within a few minutes or loses interest, pick the toy up yourself but don’t give it to him. Put him back on a stay and try again, but make it a little easier.

Once you can place the toy out of sight and your dog can easily find it, start hiding it a little further away or in a different direction. There is a balancing act here—you want him to have to work a little, but you don’t want to make the challenge to be so hard that your dog gives up. Sounds a lot like training in general, doesn’t it!

Pretty soon, you can get creative. Some of my favorite hiding places are in the bathtub, at the top of the attic stairs where no one goes, behind radiators, under piles of dirty laundry, on a chair pulled up to the dining table—you get the idea! Just don’t hide things where your dogs aren’t allowed to go. I don’t put toys on tables or counters since my dogs aren’t allowed to take things from those places.

Please don’t let your dog cheat! Ally is learning this game and it’s very cute to watch her and Flash sitting side by side in the kitchen waiting to be released for the search. She is still learning, though, and occasionally she gets up without permission. When that happens, I lead her back to her spot and remind her to stay, then we try again. If she makes a mistake again, I end the game and put stay practice on our to do list.