18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane

Author image for Laurent Shinar
Laurent Shinar • Writer and Editor
Jul 13, 2026 7:30 AM EDT

A calm doggo means a calm house, and as anyone who has lived in a hectic house will know, it is the last thing you want. So if you are finding yourself at your limit with a reactive or overly excited doggo we hope you will find some suitable suggestions for how to keep them calm in this list.

It is no surprise that we came across this desperate plea for help on Reddit's r/dogs subreddit, it is after all the main place for pupper pawrents to discuss the ins and outs of raising a well mannered pupper. So when your doggo is driving you up the wall with zoomies, barking, and generally unsettled behavior it is a great place to turn to for some doggo advice. And we can most certainly say that the plethora of pawrents who weighed in gave some stellar suggestions for what to do with a darn doggo who you so desperately want to love but are finding it tough to because of their horrid behavior.

We will explore concepts such as sniff walks, doggo massages, products you can purchase to calm your canine, and even the pawer of a predictable bedtime routine to see which solution is more suitable for you and your doggo. At the end of the day you deserve to live in happiness and harmony with your pup and not at odds with them. So putting in a little more effort as a pawrent now, can pay off massively in the long run, bringing you and your doggo closer together than ever before. So hopefully you will find a dog pawrent recommendation amongst these that speaks to your specific situation.
 

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  • 01
    "Letting my dog sleep in my room. He became an overall much calmer dog sleeping in the same room as me."
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane

    Woman lying on bed with black and white dog 

    Subjects represented by models

  • 02
    Foshiznik23 Keeping myself calm. It's made every aspect of my dog ownership easier. Edit: I meant that by keeping calm, my dog mirrors me in their behaviour.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
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    GobblefishBurrito My dog is almost 9 years old and he never got any official training besides simple commands for treats.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
  • 05
    Temporary Feature_5! Top 1% Comme... The more mental stimulation they get the calmer they tend to be. I do two types of walks with my dogs and they know the difference. We do heel walks and sniff walks.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane

  • Oooh ok this is interesting, sniff walks is something that we have also come across when we reviewed the many marvelous reasons we pawrents ought to pamper our puppers with a regular sniff walk. This is a walk that is led by the dog and is designed literally to let them sniff. Through their noses they can tell which dogs have been in the area, how they are feeling, where they are going and much more. Some pawrents even call it doggy social media. So you can imagine that allowing them to get their fill of social updates in the neighborhood would go a long way to keeping them calm as well. You would go insane after 30 minutes without access to social media, think about that…
     

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    Budget-Chair8242 age, he got calmer the older he got.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
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    Duchess Witch Research has shown that sniffing for a dog works the cognitive mind throughly-similar to a human writing and concentrating for long periods of time.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
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    sivlia 1026 Let my dog decide where to go as long as it's safe and reasonable.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
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    Ph33r-Enigma During storms my 80 pound dog is shaky, and scared. If I let him on my lap, he's a lot more calm.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
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    tmwildwood-3617 Lol...my Brittany spaniel walks on leash are 30ft at a time rotations between waiting around sniffing one area "forever" and yanking my arm off pulling to the next spot.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
  • 14
    Owlex23612 Letting my dog know I've got her back. She's not always going to be as good at reading situations as I am, so I try to make sure she knows that I've got her.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane

  • Well, this is actually a rather lovely idea but we are not so sure how one would make this happen. Unfortunately our pawrent poster did not quite go into details about what specific techniques she uses to make her dog understand that she’s got its back. But we could imagine that a range of heeling techniques and leash training methods would be very beneficial to get your dog to trust in you. It is fair to say that this suggestion has more to it than it seems and could be something that helps in a wide variety of ways.
     

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    Liuxingxing18181 For mine, the tiny thing was letting walks be slower. I stopped trying to make every walk about distance and started giving him time to sniff the same boring patch of grass
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
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    Geester43 Before bed, I do a "tick check", which involves the obvious, but I end with a massage. My dog CHILLS afterwards!
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
  • 19
    AttentionOutside308 It's mental stimulation which is tiring as well.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
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    missprincesscarolyn⚫ George: Yorkshire ... Adaptil diffuser. I think they're called Thunder something or other now. I plug it into the wall.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
  • 22
    Gronfors Banjo/Kazooie : C... A second dog (Legitimately, as a corgi he had alopecia, was constantly stressed, nonstop howling when left alone...
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
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    karmel80 Dog walks are not for walking but for taking in the world. Touch grass, smell the roses, check out the new dogs and pups in town. Also dogs like to be able to decide the route within some reason.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
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    Rainy Reese Paw massages. Thigh and leg massages. Every dog I've ever had absolutely loves them when I've done and do them and they fall into deep sleep.
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
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    GinnyJr Weirdly enough, just giving my dog a predictable bedtime routine
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane
  • 28
    Distinct_Disk_1610 · Letting my dog sleep in my room. He became an overall much calmer dog sleeping in the same room as me
    via 18 Clever Concepts to Keep Your Dog Calm and Yourself Sane

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