Canine Enrichment: what is it and why is it important?
"Enrichment is learning what our dog's needs are and then structuring an environment for them that allows them, as much as feasible, to meet those needs." (Allie Bender and Emily Strong, Canine Enrichment for the Real World).
All dogs have a common set of behaviours which allow them to explore, investigate and experience their world. These include playing, chasing, sniffing, chewing and scavenging. Enrichment provides dogs with environmental stimuli which satisfy their natural instincts and promote physical, psychological and emotional well-being. We also have to consider specific breed traits that have been installed in our dogs through hundreds of years of development. For example, herding dogs have an innate instinct to round things up (people, cars and all moving things, as well as livestock), Labradors were bred to retrieve, hounds have particularly strong instincts for tracking scents and terriers live to hunt out vermin.
The issues arise when a dog is not given an outlet to pursue these basic instincts. Trainer, Sara Paulik, addresses this. "Dogs today are largely under-employed. Each breed was created to perform very specific tasks, most of which involve a large amount of physical and mental stamina. In other words, dogs were bred to work, and we have stranded them in the unemployment line". Without appropriate ways to use their natural gifts, dogs will often exhibit problem behaviors, boredom, or become stressed and anxious. Using some simple activities on a regular basis will enable us to address these needs.
Why provide enrichment for our dogs?
Our dogs have lots of doggy behaviours that often make us frustrated and angry. They dig up our gardens, find ways to take themselves off for adventures and escape from our backyards, chew up shoes, socks, books, couches and chairs, and anything else that takes their fancy. When we are trying to give them a good walk, they either pull at the leash or slow us down by sniffing, marking and spending an inordinate amount of time investigating nooks and crannies when all we want to do is get home and have a coffee. What we often forget is that THIS IS WHAT DOGS DO! Enrichment activities are tailored to provide opportunities for us to allow our dogs to engage in their species-specific and breed-specific behaviours in appropriate ways.
Along with physical exercise, these enrichment activities also provide mental stimulation and improve the learning capacity of our canine companions. Physical exercise often just results in a fitter, more active dog. Mental exercise is far more likely to tire our dogs. Many of the typical enrichment exercises are also structured to encourage a calm and reasoned approach to activities for our dogs.
When your dog has to be alone for an extended period of time, well thought out enrichment can help to counteract boredom. And often it's when our dog is bored that many of the annoying behaviours occur.
When we make ourselves a part of the enrichment games that we can set up for our dogs, it helps to build that strong relationship which contributes to the dog becoming a willing participant in the activities that we provide.
Many of the enrichment games help to reduce stress and anxiety in dogs.
Different Types of Dog Enrichment
There are innumerable things that you can use as enrichment activities for your dog. The links at the end of this article outline a good number of different possibilities. Many of them focus on sniffing and scenting, and foraging for food. Your dog's nose is a wonderful instrument and it's an important and natural behaviour for dogs. It is their key means of communication and information gathering about their world. 20 minutes of sniffing is more enriching than an hour of just walking on the end of a leash. Check out the links below for some good ways to encourage your dog to explore their environment through sniffaris and well thought out sniffing games.
https://www.masterbowie.com/2020/06/sniffing-games-for-your-dogs-mental-exercise.html
https://www.dhot.com.au/book-a-sniffari/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UOaLZWGZnI
Do you feed your dog from a bowl? There are many more ways to feed your dog which provide them with opportunities to use the foraging instinct which is part of a dog's natural behaviour. You don't need to replace all your dog's bowl feeds with other ways of sourcing their food, but there are commercially available items such as Kongs, food puzzles,slow feeders, lickimats and snuffle mats and different types of games you can invent from DIY products (snuffle boxes, scavenger hunts, home made food puzzles) that will not only provide your dog with some, if not all, of their daily food ration, but will satisfy a basic instinct at the same time.
The links below provide some more information about why we all should be considering how we can enrich our dog's environment and our relationship and also give information about ways to cheaply create different tools that you can use to provide this enrichment.
https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/dog-care/canine-diy-enrichment
https://www.preventivevet.com/dogs/dog-enrichment-toys-games-and-more
https://www.nawt.org.uk/get-involved/news/7-diy-canine-enrichment-ideas/
https://vet.purdue.edu/discovery/croney/files/documents/enrichment.pdf