We have all heard about the importance of ‘brain drain’ and mental enrichment for your dog. Allowing your dog to engage their natural, innate primary senses to lick, sniff, chew, dig, forage and scavenge in appropriate ways can hugely enrich your dog’s day. It can provide your dog with boredom relief, outlets for stress and frustration, burn excess energy, improve their mental wellbeing and prevent other behaviors developing later on.
However, this does not necessarily mean you need to spend lots of enrichment toys and food puzzles. Here is our top tips for at home simple enrichment techniques.
Have an egg carton? Pop your dog’s kibble into some socks, roll them up and pop them in the egg holes of the carton and then toss to your dog and let them forage through the cardboard and socks for the rewards. Egg cartons are non-toxic if your dog shreds them
Get an old towel, scatter kibble in the middle of it. Roll the towel up and tie the ends like a burrito. Give your dog the rolled up towel and let them spend time unravelling it.
Allow your dog extra sniffy time on walks. Rather than pulling them away from scent trails. Let them sniff for longer, follow scents and even sniff their way and lead you in the direction they want to go for a few minutes. Olfactory work like sniffing lowers heart rate, blocks off the stress and anxious part of the canine brain and activates the pleasure part of the brain giving your dog those feel-goof hormones.
Scatter feeding allows your dog to engage in natural foraging and scavenging needs. Rather than feeding them in a bowl, toss and scatter their food in the garden and let them spend a half hour sniffing out their food. 10 mins of sniffy work is more mentally draining than 90 mins physical walk.
