7 Games to Play with Your Dog Without Any Toys

All dogs are different in their own unique ways, but they all, sooner or later, get bored. Whether it's on a road trip, in the middle of the day while you're out, or just when you're on vacation and lounging, they'll want something. Attention, pets, play; as long as they get what they need to occupy them, they'll be fine.

What happens if you want to play, and they want to play, but you don't happen to have any toys for them on hand? Well, fortunately, you don't necessarily need toys just to play with your pup. All you need is a little ingenuity and a bit of understanding of what makes them tick.

So, let's explore seven games you can play with your dog when you don't have any toys on hand, to alleviate boredom, burn energy, and calm a restless pup.

Toy-Free Game #1: Trick Training and Routines

Training a dog starts young, and you should always build a strong foundation with the basics like potty training and recall training. Beyond that, tricks are a great way to engage the mental side of your canine companion. Making them think about what they're doing helps wear them out and burn more energy than an endless amount of running around, and it's a great way to foster a connection and build more obedience.

Normally, trick training would be done with something as a reward, but clicker training can be great too. As long as you can engage your dog and reward them with some kind of positive feedback, you can teach them new tricks for a surprisingly long time.

Start with individual tricks. The obvious ones, like sit, stay, lie down, and roll over, are easy places to start. Other tricks can include things like shake (with both paws), spin, play dead, jump, and hold. Really advanced tricks can involve walking backwards, covering their eyes, and crawling.

Once your dog knows a roster of tricks, you can start to combine them into whole routines. Instead of performing one trick and rewarding them, have them perform two, then three, and more. This build-up can eventually do away with rewards entirely (other than praise and pets, of course), and you'll have a clever, obedient, and well-trained pooch. They'll be the life of the party for sure!

Toy-Free Game #2: Nose to Hand

This is sort of a variation on trick training, but it's with a special command in mind. Hand targeting is a trick you train your dog to perform, where you hold out a hand and they come and touch it with their nose. That's all there is to it, at the start.

To make it more advanced, you need to change things up. Put the hand behind your back where they can't see it. Change which hand they're supposed to target. Have them sit and wait while you walk a ways away, then have them come touch your hand.

It's a simple game, almost like a patty cake sort of touching game, for dogs instead of children. But, especially if you have some room to move around and can make it a little more complex on them, you can really get them invested.

If you have some accessories, you can hide a treat in one hand and have them touch the other, or use scent marks to have them target a specific hand. There are a lot of variations on the theme, depending on what you have available without toys around.

Toy-Free Game #3: Hide and Seek

This can be a fun game to play with your pup, but it does require you to be in a familiar place where they're free to roam. So, certainly not something you want to do at a hotel, a local nature reserve, or a stranger's house.

You know what hide and seek is, of course. You can't ask a dog to count to 100 before coming to find you, so instead, you need one of two things: a way to call them or a partner.

• You can just shout from across the house, calling them to find you after you've hidden.

• You can use a walkie-talkie (or voice app, or voice through a camera) to give them the command, with the added layer of confusion of not knowing where your voice is coming from.

• You can have a partner give them a command to go find you.

Whatever option works for you, the goal is simply for them to track you down. Your hiding place doesn't need to be super complex, either. Standing behind a door or in a closet, hiding under a blanket or under a bed, there are all sorts of great hiding places. Just make sure they can find you in the first place, since you don't want them to be tearing down doors to get at you.

Toy-Free Game #4: Wild Sits

This one comes straight from the American Kennel Club. The idea is to train your pup to be able to calm down and settle at the drop of a hat.

Start by riling them up, getting them as happy and rambunctious as you can. Praise them, cheer, run around, get that energy level up so they're equally happy to be there. Then, when they're at the peak of their excitement, tell them to sit.

The goal is to train them so that no matter how excited they are, they can sit when you tell them to sit.

To make this more complex for your pup, enlist the aid of a friend to be distracting and energetic around them. When several people are being excited, the energy is infectious, and it can be even more challenging for your pooch to calm down.

Ideally, you can get this working while they're on a leash, too. That way, it becomes a very effective "they escaped" form of training. If you drop the leash or they pull out of your hand and start to chase something, your "sit" command will override that, because you've trained them with wild sits.

Toy-Free Game #5: Cup Games

Even if you don't have toys on hand, it's not hard to get a set of three cups, bowls, or other items that can cover something like a treat. Hide a treat under one of them, shuffle them around, and get your dog to pick the one that has the treat. You can repeat as long as it takes for your pup to get bored of the game or lose interest.

If you don't want to give them that many treats, you can simply make a little item, like a ball of paper, to hide and have them find. As long as there's praise involved, as a positive reward for finding the right cup, it will be good enough to do the job.

Toy-Free Game #6: Impromptu Fetch

While you tend to think of fetch as a game played with the fetch toys you keep on hand, it doesn't have to be. All you really need is a durable enough item that you can throw and have your dog retrieve.

Finding a nice stick (cleaning of any sharp bits, of course) is nature's fetch toy. You could also ball up a sock and throw that, toss an old shoe or sandal, or anything else that's safe and disposable enough that you won't mind if it gets lost.

Toy-Free Game #7: Scent Games

Most of the above assume you don't have anything that can serve as a toy. But if you have supplies and just want toy-free games, one great option is scent games.

Scent games take advantage of your pup's powerful sense of smell. Use something that is scent-marked, using a tiny dab of essential oil, and hide it. Then, ask your dog to find it.

Before you can do a scent game, you need to lay some groundwork. Obviously, you need the scents in the first place, and you probably want at least half a dozen or so. You'll need items that you can mark with the scent, which could be tennis balls, cotton balls inside yogurt containers, or any number of other combinations.

You'll want to pick scents your dog will be able to identify and won't hate. Scent competitions use scents like birch, anise, clove, and cypress, for example. Familiarize your dog with the scent, so they know to associate a scent with a word.

Creating a scent game is usually about hiding the scent. Indoors, you can hide them in different rooms, under pillows or blankets, or in containers your dog is allowed to open, like a toybox. Outside, you can hide them around your yard, in the plants or behind trees, or even bury them if you don't mind your pup digging around.

From there, it's just a matter of putting it all together. Pick a scent, tell them to find it, and have them bring back whatever scent-marked item you had left for them to find.

Other Ideas for Toy-Free Games

If the seven above weren't good enough, or if you have some supplies or you're willing to use household objects, there are some other ideas you could consider.

Here are just a few:

• Obstacle Courses. Make a DIY obstacle course out of pillows, couch cushions, blankets, chairs and tables, and other objects. Then, use it as a makeshift agility course, asking your dog to leap over pillow stacks, crawl under chairs, and weave between furniture legs.

• Snuffle Mats. A snuffle mat is basically just a really thick shag carpet that you can hide treats in, so your pup has to snuffle around looking for them. You can buy them from most pet stores, or you can make your own; all it takes is a box and a bunch of strips of fabric you're willing to cut up. Cut strips, tie them into a mass, and put treats in it.

• Tug of War. While the usual tug-of-war toy is a knotted rope, you can also just make a tug rope out of something you don't particularly mind sacrificing for the purpose. Old towels, in particular, can be perfect for the purpose.

• The Treat Ball. This can be a fun one. Take a treat and hide it in the middle of a blanket, and roll up and wad up the blanket. To get to the treat, your pup needs to unroll the whole thing.

There are a lot of possible ideas to keep a dog engaged and entertained without toys, so if you have some I didn't mention, feel free to leave them in the comments! I always love to hear what people come up with.

Toy-Free Play with Dogs FAQ

I have a few answers to some common questions I wanted to add to this post here before we wrap up.

Why not just make "toys" out of household objects?

You can do that if you want, sure. However, you have to be very careful and supervise your pup when they're playing.

Dog toys are built to stand up to doggy abuse, but your household objects aren't. If your pup swallows bits of a torn-up bit of clothing or furniture, it can be dangerous, so make sure you aren't leaving them alone with anything they can destroy.

What about just going for a walk or run?

That's also a fine idea, but it's not really a game per se, so I didn't want to list it above.

It also might not be appropriate; it might be bad weather out, or you might be on a tight schedule and can't go out, or any number of other reasons.

I'm running out of ideas for tricks. Help!

It's well-known that dogs are capable of learning dozens or hundreds of individual tricks, with well-trained dogs learning as many as 200+ different commands. I don't know about you, but it would take me a long time just to remember that many commands. Fortunately, there are a lot of online lists of tricks like these that you can reference for inspiration.

When the goal is just to entertain your pooch and wear them out, any of these toy-free games is going to work. If you have more specialized goals, you might need to consider what best suits your needs. Either way, this post should serve as some good inspiration, so give it a try!