What is enrichment? According to the Oxford Dictionary, it is “the action of improving or enhancing the quality or value of something.” If you’ve been to a well-run zoo lately, you’ll notice Environmental Enrichment activities on the calendar for the animals that call those places home! It’s important that captive animals (this includes your dog!) has access to and is provided environmentally enriching activities. Through enrichment, our dogs can express normal and natural dog behaviors, is a safe and ‘people approved’ way.
Enrichment is also vital for decreasing boredom, building confidence, strengthening problem-solving skills, and most of all, decreasing cortisol!
There are 5 main categories of enrichment for dogs (although, you can certainly divide those even smaller!):
- Sensory
- Nosework, spreading safe scents around the yard/house, chasing bubbles, white noise, puppy socialization sounds, dog music,
- Food
- Kongs, Interactive food dispensing toys, dog safe chews, scatter feeding, food puzzles, new and different foods
- Environmental
- Decompression walks, dig pit, tunnels & obstacles, new safe places, different surfaces, safe places to retreat to
- Occupational & Species-Specific Behaviors
- Sports, flirt pole, remote/wind-up toys, tricks, breed-specific activities, foraging, nosework, chewing, new smells
- Social
- Play with other dogs, interactive games with human (tug, fetch, hide & seek), interactions with other animals, TTouch, massage, relaxation time together
Your dog’s breed will play a large part in which type of enrichment they will get the most benefit from. That being said, a recent small study was conducted studying the effect of various enrichment activities on frequency of relaxation behaviors, alert behaviors, and stress behaviors.
Results showed overall improvements in behavior with all of the offered enrichment, with the best results coming from dog-dog play and “playhouse” activities (as defined in the paper: Playhouse consisting of tunnels, slides and platforms provided for the dogs to explore for 15 min with handler providing encouragement when needed), and the least change coming from the food-based activities.
That’s a lot of science. What does that mean for our dogs??
First, offering enrichment to our dogs will help improve their behavior by INCREASING RELAXATION BEHAVIORS and DECREASING STRESS BEHAVIORS.
Second, while offering food-based enrichment is much easier for us humans, other enrichment activities might be most beneficial for our dogs. But hey, anything is better than nothing in my book 😊
Here’s a downloadable handout with my favorite enrichment options!
