Can We Sometimes Miss an Opportunity with Enrichment?

Enrichment is a word that is coming into ever wider usage in the dog world. Adding enrichment into the lives of our dogs means adding value and enjoyment to their days, letting them carry out normal and natural dog behaviours.

There are now many books, articles on websites, social media groups etc, all focusing on the topic of enrichment activities for dogs. This greater knowledge and awareness of enrichment activities and the benefits that providing enrichment can bring to our dogs is fantastic and can only serve to increase their enjoyment of their lives.

Many different forms of enrichment exist, from scentwork exercises, food-based enrichment through things like forage mats (which can be homemade), KONGs and other food dispensing toys like the Nina Ottosson range or K9 Connectables (use code goodguardianship10 to get a 10% discount). There are also ways we can use household items like muffin tins and dog safe recycling such as cardboard boxes and packaging paper to make budget options. There are interactive toys such as tug toys like the ones from Tug-E-Nuff (use code GOODGUARDIANSHIP for 10% off here too). 

Finn thought this looked like fun even before adding treats!

We can add enrichment by taking our dogs for their walks but letting them choose the route (when safe to do so), letting them lead the walk and go where they would like to go. We can take them for a sniffy walk, a ‘sniffari’ where the distance covered doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as the amount of time they have on that occasion to investigate the smells around them. A 20-minute sniffari is as tiring for my high energy Border Collie as an hour’s usual walk would be.

This drive to find activities we can add into our dogs’ day can mean that we miss one of the simplest and most fulfilling activities for many dogs, because we get locked into a constant search of how to provide them with things to do and don't necessarily given them the chance to choose to relax. How much they will choose to do this does of course very much depend on the individual personality of the dog as some very busy dogs can find it hard to relax!

The nature of what I do means I work from home, at a desk in what would usually be the dining area of our house. The desk sits next to doors out into the garden and, especially this time of year when the weather is fine, these doors remain open from when I get up to when I go to bed, and my dog can wander in and out as he pleases.

For quite a while in this setup every time I took a break I was fitting in an enrichment activity for him – after all, I’m sitting here for a good part of the day and so he must be getting bored, right? The other day I was struggling to concentrate for various reasons, and so ended up taking more breaks through the day for a while. And to begin with I started doing things like taking a toy out for us to play with, setting up a food hunting exercise, or getting the clicker out for some fun training activities.

He was really up for it initially but then I noticed at one point I went out to find him in the garden and he was contentedly wandering through the garden, sniffing through the grass, and investigating through the different plants in our garden. I say garden but it’s more of a little wilderness full of rarely mown grass, wildflowers, and fruit trees as we’re determinedly doing everything we can to encourage bees and butterflies. After a little while of doing this, he laid down to bask in the sunshine and was watching the birds in the trees (and the squirrels who are safe in the trees but if they come down into the garden look out!)

This is from the Instagram account for Good Guardianship (also on Facebook)

Sometimes the best enrichment we can offer is to give them the time and space to do their own thing – it could be argued that the sniffari falls into this category and I wouldn’t disagree – so if they want to wander around the garden sniffing and looking at things in peace and quiet, let them. If they want to sit and watch the world go by and just take it all in, that’s just fine with me.

As with everything else, the dog is the one who decides whether or not an activity is enriching. And sometimes that is just laying back and relaxing.