French Bulldog Nine forty on a Tuesday night, and the living room has gone quiet in that suspicious way. Your Frenchie has been circling the coffee table for ten solid minutes, huffing at the couch cushions, radiating a very specific energy that says something in here is about to get chewed.
So you tear off a piece of chicken, toss it behind the armchair, and say two words.
The whole dog changes. Ears swivel forward. Nose drops to the carpet. That compact little body goes from restless gremlin to focused detective in roughly half a second, and for the next four minutes she does not think about the couch, the baseboards, or your left shoe even once.
That’s the game.
It’s called Find It, it costs nothing, and it uses the one piece of equipment your French Bulldog was absolutely born with. Here’s how to teach it tonight, step by step, so you have it ready the next time 9pm rolls around.
Why sniffing works better than running for this breed
Let’s be honest about something. A lot of classic dog games are a poor fit for a Frenchie.
Long games of fetch in the backyard, marathon tug sessions, chasing a flirt pole in August heat: these are how you end up with a dog who is wheezing on the tile floor while you Google emergency vets at midnight.
Those squishy faces come with real limits. Short muzzles mean less efficient cooling, and a Frenchie who overheats does it fast and quietly.
Scent work sidesteps the whole problem.
A dog who has hunted for ten minutes is usually more satisfied than a dog who has walked for thirty.
It drains mental energy, not oxygen
Sniffing is legitimate work. Your dog is processing information, problem solving, and making decisions, all while standing mostly still.
That’s why you’ll see the post-game crash. Ten or fifteen minutes of searching often buys you an hour of a dog asleep on your feet.
It plays to the Frenchie personality
French Bulldogs are clever, stubborn, food motivated, and deeply committed to whatever benefits them personally. Find It happens to reward all four of those traits at once.
No athleticism required. No jumping, no sprinting, no long stretches of self control.
Just a nose, a snack, and a dog who thinks she is getting away with something.
What you need before you start
Almost nothing, which is the point.
High value treats. Not the dusty biscuits at the bottom of the jar. Use something smelly: chicken, cheese, freeze dried liver, a few flakes of tuna.
A quiet room. Kitchen or living room is perfect. Turn off the TV for the first session.
A hungry dog. Play before dinner, not after. A full Frenchie is a Frenchie who will look at you, blink slowly, and lie down.
Five to ten minutes. That’s genuinely all this takes on night one.
Optional but fun later on: a muffin tin, a few tennis balls, a cardboard box, an old towel.
Teach it tonight: the step by step plan
Work through these in order. Most dogs blow through the first three steps in a single evening.
Step 1: Load the words
Hold a treat where your dog can see it. Say "find it" in a bright, slightly ridiculous voice, then drop the treat right at her front paws.
She eats it. That’s the entire rep.
Repeat this eight or ten times. You are not teaching her to search yet, you are teaching her that those two words mean good things are about to hit the floor.
Keep your tone consistent. The phrase should sound the same every single time, because that sound is what you’ll eventually use from across the house.
Step 2: Add a little distance
Now toss the treat a few feet away, still in plain sight, and say your cue as it leaves your hand.
She’ll trot over and grab it. Easy.
Do six or seven of these, throwing in different directions so she has to look around rather than just walk in a straight line.
Step 3: Break the line of sight
Here’s where the real game starts.
While she’s watching, place a treat just behind a chair leg, beside the couch, or under the edge of a blanket. Something she saw you put down, but can’t see anymore.
Say the cue. Then shut up and let her work.
This part is important, so resist every instinct you have. Do not point. Do not steer her by the collar. Do not say "no, over there."
The moment you help, you take over the thinking, and the thinking is the whole exercise.
Step 4: Hide a few at once
Ask her to sit or stay (or gently hold her collar if the stay isn’t reliable yet, which, let’s be real, it often isn’t).
Scatter four or five treats around the room while she waits. Keep them easy at first: corners, along the wall, near furniture legs.
Release her with your cue and watch that nose switch on.
The nose tires a dog out from the inside, and it never once asks the lungs for a favor.
Step 5: Introduce the muffin tin
Now for the version that turns a simple game into an actual puzzle.
Drop a treat into three or four cups of a standard muffin tin, then cover every cup with a tennis ball.
Your Frenchie has to nudge, paw, and eventually yank balls out of the way to get what she’s smelling underneath. It is extremely entertaining to watch and surprisingly hard for a dog who has never done it.
Start with only two balls covering treats and the rest of the cups empty. Build up from there.
Step 6: Move it out of the room
Once she’s confident, take the game on tour.
Hide treats in the hallway while she waits in the kitchen. Tuck one on the bottom step, one under a rug edge, one behind a door.
Then send her off and follow along quietly.
Outdoors works beautifully too, as long as the weather is reasonable. Scatter a handful of kibble in the grass and let her graze her way across the yard, which is basically a sniffari on hard mode.
When it doesn’t go smoothly
Every dog hits a snag somewhere. Here’s what usually causes it.
She just stares at you
Totally normal, and it almost always means the treats are too boring or she’s not hungry enough.
Upgrade the snack. Skip a meal’s worth of kibble and play before dinner instead.
He gives up after ten seconds
Your hides got hard too fast. Back up two steps and make the next three finds almost insultingly easy.
Confidence is the fuel here.
Every round should end with your dog convinced she is a genius.
She’s inhaling everything, including the carpet
Very on brand for the breed. Use larger treat pieces that require a bit of chewing, and avoid hiding food anywhere near things you don’t want sampled: houseplants, shoe racks, the kids’ Legos.
He found one treat and now he’s done
Some dogs quit once the first success lands. Cheer, reset, and drop a fresh treat in an obvious spot to restart the hunt.
Momentum matters more than difficulty.
Level it up once she’s hooked
After a week or two, plain scatters will feel too easy, and a bored Frenchie will let you know.
Towel roll. Lay a treat on a hand towel, roll it up loosely, and let her unroll it.
Box city. Three or four open cardboard boxes on the floor, one treat in one of them.
The name game. Hide a favorite toy instead of food and use its name as the cue.
Chair forest. Arrange kitchen chairs into a small maze and hide treats around the legs.
Two room search. Hide treats in two connected rooms so she has to actually travel while working.
Rotate these so no single version gets stale, and keep every session short, because a game that ends while she still wants more is a game she’ll be thrilled to play again tomorrow night.