I have a 5 month old Havanese and I’m starting to wonder if I’m not stimulating her enough. She follows me around the house and just… stares at me. Sometimes she gets mouthy or does full zoomies (anywhere from 0-2x a day depending on the day). She can struggle to settle sometimes too.
For context on the settling, she CAN self-settle and does it fairly well a lot of the time. She’ll take herself under the sofa or under my desk and nap. We’ve done settle work with her and she’s generally ok at it…. She doesn’t know stay yet. But there are patches where she just seems restless and can’t quite switch off. After daycare and big walks she just walks into her crate and goes to bed.
Our days are honestly a real mix. Some days she gets sniff walks, training, puzzle toys, and tug. Other days it’s more like a walk and some tug or puzzle and tug and that’s it. There’s no real set routine for play specifically, it kind of depends on the day and how busy I am with work. She goes to a small home daycare once a week with 3 or 4 other dogs, and on Fridays the same daycare lady takes her and the other dogs on an hour long group walk. She gets a bigger walk on most weekends too.
She doesn’t really bring me toys unprompted unless we were already playing. She CAN self-entertain (she’ll throw her own toys around and chase them) but I’m not sure if the staring and following means she wants more from me or if that’s just… a velcro puppy being a velcro puppy.
For those with similar breeds or puppies around this age, how much actual interactive play are you doing per day? And how do you tell the difference between “I’m bored, engage me” and “I’m a puppy and I just want to be near you”?
submitted by /u/Weird_Fall2028
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