Playing with your dog can be both fun and rewarding! Here’s how:
Going to a zoo or marine mammal facility, you may have heard the term “enrichment” during a presentation. The keepers that take care of them know that providing enrichment opportunities for their animals will keep those animals happy and healthy. For example, you may have seen treats or food frozen in large blocks of ice during summer months for a lion to play with. Or, food hidden in trees, logs or around a habitat for playful monkeys to find. As dog owners, it’s no different – we need to provide ways for our dogs to be mentally and physically stimulated so they grow to be well-rounded, happy, and healthy. Enrichment for your dog can be a great way to provide this mental and physical stimulation!
There are four ways dogs will thrive:
- Active Play
- Challenging Training
- Physical Exercise
- Social Interaction
Integrating these for areas into our dogs’ lives will not only improve their bonds with us, but will also decrease behavioral problems and increase healthy behaviors.
Here are six easy ways to provide enrichment for your dog and put them in their routine:
- Make eating more exciting! This may be one of the easiest ways to provide some enrichment. You can make several changes to how your dog receives their daily nutritional needs without changing the nutritional value:
- Change the texture: Put kibble in ice cube trays with non-salted broth and freeze, add raw meats occasionally to their food bowl, give them safe bones to chew on (disclaimer: always check with your vet to see if they recommend adding raw foods to your dog’s diet; and NEVER give them cooked bones b/c they splinter)
- Change the size: Chop up kibble, treats, or their raw food diet (if you do one) into smaller bites.
- Change the temperature: Again, freezing treats or kibble in broth or water is great for summer months; adding warm broth or water in winter can have the opposite effect 😀
- Change the meal timing: While it’s nice to keep a set routine during the housebreaking phase, once your dog is potty trained you can adjust when you feed him/her. Or, if you are clicker-training, use the meal for a training session instead of just putting the bowl down.
- Change the treats: Provide vegetables (like carrots) as a healthy alternative to their normal goodies.
- Dial into their natural instincts! Doesn’t your dog love to sniff the ground? Why not let them have a reward at the end of their journey?
- Hide food throughout the room
- Use a treat-dispensing toy that will let treats fall out occasionally instead of all-at-once:
- Feeding trays/puzzle trays are now available that hide treats and let your dog discover them. Don’t want to wait and get one? Place treats in a muffin tin and place tennis balls on top of the cup!
- Don’t want to spend money on expensive toys? Use cardboard boxes, toilet paper rolls, newspaper balls, etc and place them throughout the house.
- Scatter your dog’s food around the backyard and let him have fun searching for it.
- Brain game – training is enrichment, too! Not just obedience training (which is important) but any type of training: agility, tricks, etc.
- The creativity game: place an object on the floor (like a cardboard box). When your dog touches the object, say “good” and give him a treat. The goal of this game is to have your dog interact with the object a different way each time, and therefore it encourages creativity. So, your dog will probably go back and sniff the object, which got him a treat the first time, but this time it won’t…anything he does differently with the object (paw at it, bark at it, jump on it, bite it, etc.) will now get the reward.
- Make your own obstacle course with mop and broom handles placed on chairs.
- Shape-training to do a trick
- Self-care, grooming is important. Dogs groom themselves, which is enriching for them. But, when they aren’t allowed to spend energy via other outlets, sometimes the grooming can become excessive (and therefore problematic). So, we can help provide other enrichment opportunities to spend that extra energy so their self-maintenance afterwards is more enriching too.
- Water therapy: give them access to natural bodies of water (lakes, rivers, waterfalls, etc.), man-made bodies of water (kiddie pools, sprinklers, etc.), or water sports (dock diving, dog surfing, etc.)
- Provide healthy ways for them to self-groom: chew toys or training for tooth brushing for healthy teeth.
- Train for paw-wiping and rolling themselves dry
- Engage the senses. Your dog’s sensory organs are far more developed than ours, so use them! Smell, auditory, tactile – these are all senses you can tap into for enrichment opportunities
- Oh those scents! Place different-scented fabric in containers and let your dog investigate. Poke/drill holes in plastic containers or PVC pipe and include scents like vanilla, lavender, and mint.
- Listen up! Record yourself reading a book and play it while you are gone
- Where am I? Take your family and your dog outside, and let one person go hide. Let them call your dog – and let your dog use it’s ears and nose to find the hidden person.
- Change the surroundings. This is especially good when you get a new puppy and want to get them used to different environments. You want them to be comfortable in all types of surroundings: woods, parks, parking lots, fields, with other dogs, etc.
- During a walk, give them “sniff breaks” and let them explore the area on the leash (without pulling). Let them sniff their favorite things – it’s rewarding to them 😀
Remember – just because your dog grows out of the puppy stage doesn’t mean you don’t have to provide enrichment anymore. Your older dogs will love these activities too!
Tips taken and expanded from Dog Fancy Magazine
Need help with providing any of these enrichment ideas for your dog? We can provide all types of training!
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