Enrichment Resources
What is Enrichment?
All animals find engaging in certain “species-specific” activities enjoyable, and having outlets for these is essential to their well-being. Enrichment is about intentionally providing our canine friends opportunities to rehearse these natural, normal behaviors that feel good to them.
Different dogs enjoy different kinds of physical exercise and play, and most people recognize this. But most people don’t realize that for dogs of all ages, quieter activities like licking, chewing, sniffing, and shredding are also natural behaviors that in particular can soothe and calm dogs, reduce their stress levels, and produce all kinds of good effects in the brain.
These quieter enrichment activities also can be helpful to pair with confinement training, in the evenings to help a puppy simmer down for bedtime, as well as when when visitors arrive to the house or you want your pup to learn to just chill when you are gardening.
Incorporating enrichment into mealtimes is easy
Rather than feed out of bowls, you can feed your pup out of toys like Kongs. Start with by just putting some kibble in and letting your dog figure out that food comes out if by pushing it around a bit. Once a pup’s got that idea, you can up the challenge by stuffing Kongs with yogurt, peanut butter, soaked kibble, broth - you can even freeze them as interest in eating out of the Kong increases. Lickimats are another option for some dogs. Either can be a great help for confinement training!
Your pup may then be ready for puzzle toys for mealtime like the Busy Buddy Egg and the BobOLot as he becomes more savvy - dogs are scavengers!
Scatter feeding is also an option (just tossing all a pup’s kibble out in a space and having her eat it piece by piece as she finds it - you can use a room or a backyard, even in the snow!), and there are snuffle mats for indoor snuffling, too.
Don’t forget that almost universal canine pleasure - chewing!
Providing big heavy chewing options like bully sticks and raw bones, as long as it’s safe to do so, can be a great energy and tension outlet and really help a dog relax.
Check out the following videos to give you an idea of what enrichment options there are:
