If your kids love dogs or have a dog, they will get a kick out of this Walk the Dog logic game. It’s a great addition to your homeschooling curriculum to develop your kid’s analytical and thinking skills.
When you are walking a dog, especially in a city or an area with lots of dog owners, things tend to get interesting.
Walk the Dog recreate likely situations that you might encounter while taking a stroll with your dog and challenge you to use your logic and deduction skills to avoid disastrous situations.
My kids found the Walk the Dog game amusing because it imitates real-life scenarios. For example, getting the leash wrapped around a tree, crossing the street to prevent another dog from getting too close, or distancing your dog from a cat (or rabbits if you are in my neighborhood).
If your preschooler enjoyed the Smart Farmer game and finished all the challenges, Walk the Dog is a great segue to the fun logic game. Don’t be surprised if your kids start coming up with hilarious stories about a dog walker’s day with his or her best friend!
Overview of Walk the Dog
Who let the dogs out? Apparently dog walkers who are having trouble keeping their dogs in line and are pulling hard on the leashes!
The objective of Walk the Dog is successfully positioning the dog walkers and their dogs so that:
- All the leashes are under tension.
- Dogs can’t be placed adjacent to other dogs or cats (but can be diagonal a dog or cat).
- The leashes can’t cross another leash or a dog, person, or cat.
The game contains:
- A game board
- 3 dog walkers with dogs on leashes
- 1 additional dog (without a walker)
- 2 cats
- 1 tree
- 1 challenge booket with 80 challenges and solutions
- 1 travel bag
The Starter-level puzzles are fairly simple. You get a lot of clues on where to put the dogs, cats, the tree, and dog walkers. I am always impressed by how SmartGames designers map out the puzzles so that kids can learn the rules and strategy of the game without getting overwhelmed.
Once your kid reaches Junior-level challenges, the puzzles no longer tell you the specific color of the dog walkers and their locations. You’ll get some clue as to where a dog walker should be, but you won’t know if it’s the yellow, the blue, or the red one.
You won’t know all the locations of the dogs either. Instead of a straightforward puzzle, you may now need to use trial and error as well as logic to figure out the placement of all the game pieces.
Then, as you progress to the Master-level, you will get fewer and fewer clues. The booklet will give you just enough clues for you to have a unique solution to the puzzle, and that’s all.
I find that even adults need time to sit and figure out the Master-level challenges. If your kid is getting impatient and frustrated, it’s totally understandable! But that’s why Walk the Dog and other games by SmartGames are so wonderful for kids to play – they learn to focus and push through instead of giving up on a tough situation.
And if your kids really can’t solve the puzzles, no worries! The back of the booklet has the solutions to all the puzzles. Sometimes I would take a peek and give my kids a clue if they get really stuck.
If you haven’t noticed yet in the pictures above, the leashes of the yellow and red person are long enough and can bend 90 degrees around the tree! This little detail excited my kids to no end.
This happens way too many times when we walk our dog! Our beloved German Shepherd loves to chase little critters into the bushes, and we always end up with our leash around a bush or tree.
Final Thoughts on the Walk the Dog Game
Walk the Dog is an excellent game for your kids to play independently. I love incorporating it in my homeschool schedule so that one kid can play the game while I teach the other.
That said, my kids love it so much that they would play it even when we are not homeschooling! And they also like to solve the challenges in the booklet together. Mommy is not going to complain about some quiet time while the kids play peacefully in harmony!
Walk the Dog is part of Timberdoodle’s second-grade curriculum kit. If you want to learn about more fun and exciting logic games for your kids to play, make sure you check out Color Catch and Q-bitz Solo!