Petcademy

Getting started

Engaging in structured relaxation exercises can strengthen your dog's relaxation skills and help them recover from heightened states of excitement or anxiety, especially around other dogs.

Setting up

Depending on your dogs' comfort and tolerance levels around each other, your setup may vary. You can separate them with a baby gate, exercise pen, or by tethering them side by side while preventing direct interaction. You will need a mat for each of your dogs, and may need the help of a friend or family member.

If either dog is overly excited by the other and unable to calm down, you will need to use the baby gate or exercise pen to create distance between your dogs. Consider keeping each dog on a leash to maintain the space and set up the mats as far as needed for your dogs to be under threshold.

Follow these steps when teaching your dog to relax

• Set up a mat for each of your dogs

• Once each dog is on their mat, ask for a "Down"

• The moment each dog lies down on their mat, say 'Yes' and reward them with a treat

• When each dog is lying down, continue providing each with treats for up to one minute

• Over time, your dog will exhibit more relaxed behaviors, such as resting their head on the mat

• In addition to teaching the dogs to relax in each others presence, this exercise helps build good associations between the dogs as they’re both receiving delicious treats when in each others company

Pro tips

• As your dogs becomes more relaxed on the mat, you can gradually increase the time between treats

• When the dogs appear very relaxed in each other's presence, exhibiting loose and relaxed body language, with their tails in a neutral position or gently wagging, and their ears natural and relaxed, you can introduce work-to-eat toys like Fun feeder, KONG classic toy or Toppl as a replacement for individual treats