Games
How to teach a dog to play hide and seek
You vanish upstairs mid-play, call once, and the dog hunts room to room until it finds you.
What “hide & seek” actually means
In Proof this is a skill in its own right, because it is recall practice wearing a disguise — finding you becomes the best game in the house.
Teach recall first — it is what this one is built on.
The stages
These steps are a draft pending review by a credentialed trainer. They describe standard positive-reinforcement marker training; the app carries the same notice on every session screen.
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Stage 1 — Easy hides
Goal: Dog finds you behind a door on the recall word
- Someone holds the dog, or use a wait. Duck behind a door and call once.
- Being found is a party: jackpot treats, a favourite toy, real delight.
- Two rooms, then upstairs, then genuinely hard spots. The dog is learning to look for you when you disappear — which is exactly the habit you want off-lead.
If it goes wrong
- Dog waits at the last known spot looking confused? A helper can point-and-go with them once or twice; then make your next hide easier.
- Dog finds it stressful, not fun — whining, frantic? Shrink it: hide in plain sight behind a chair and be found instantly. Some dogs need the game to start at zero.
How long does it take?
Most foundation skills reach their bar in two to four weeks of short daily sessions. Adolescence can temporarily un-stick anything, which is normal.
Proof does not put a timeline on an individual skill, and neither should anything else — the honest answer depends on the dog in front of you, how often you practise, and where you practise. What it does instead is measure: every session records how many reps landed, so progress is a number rather than a feeling.
Proving it in 3 different places
A behaviour that only works in the kitchen is situational, not trained. Hide & seek counts as proven in Proof once it clears the bar above at the top stage in 3 genuinely different contexts:
- Indoors — the quiet room where everything works
- Garden — outdoors, but home turf
- Street — pavements, traffic, passing people
- Park — other dogs, long grass, real distraction
- Somewhere new — a place the dog has never worked before
Proof also expires. Leave a proven skill for two months without asking for it and it returns to the daily plan as a refresher, because that is what actually happens to trained behaviour.