Enrichment and mental stimulation for dogs and pets
Welcome back to the blog!
My tip today is - don’t get stuck in a rut.
Epic enrichment station!
Not being stuck in a rut? What do you mean Katie? Like falling down a hole?
Enrichment, dear reader, that's what I mean!
Enrichment! What's that and where can I find it? Will it make me rich?
It's about helping improve mental stimulation for your pet, which can have a happy side effect of your pet feeling more content. Enrichment helps prevent what we perceive of as "naughty" behaviour and channels it into something more productive. So yes in a way it's winner, winner chicken dinner all round!
Best of all, you can find it wherever and whenever. Bit vague? Read on! You can help improve good behaviour and contentment by making a few changes to your pets' environment and giving them safe outlets for some of their natural instincts such as foraging, problem solving, chewing, hunting and playing.
How cool is that! If you know someone inventive or imaginative, and one of you knows your pet and the species really well, you can achieve something amazing together to generate lust for life in your pet. Check out what these guys did for their dog -
Depending on which species you have chosen to share your home or life with (humans count too, after all, doing the same thing day in day out gets repetitive and you risk going a bit stir crazy or institutionalised).
So what can you do to improve their quality of life, especially while confined or not living in natural habitats? Luckily, quite a bit and there are many resources available to assist you in doing so.
And the enrichment and brain drain games can be adapted to suit the season, like apple and carrot bobbing for horses in summer, jolly ball games in the autumn, foraging in the winter. Here are a couple of ideas, just to get you started:
Cats - A wonderful website and Facebook group developed to educate cat slaves, lots of ideas of food and toy enrichment at Fundamentally Feline.
The favourite with my own cat, Lego, is foraging for his food using nifty ideas and toys to help him hunt in the house like the ones on this website Food Puzzles for Cats. Lego also loves the cat toys by Da Bird, and Kong cat toys are proving popular with him and my client’s cats
Dogs - Based on the book Beyond the Bowl by Diana Kasperowicz Jodie White and this Facebook group is a great source of inspiration for dog owners.
Some dogs thrive on learning and being active, so teaching tricks or doing tracking type games for them, other prefer searching for their dinner in the garden on a treasure hunt.
Ren loves all her interactive food toys and puzzles, but they need not cost the earth, I wrote this article a while ago which might give you ideas, click HERE to read it.
Your dog may be older and need a less physically challenging but equally cognitive activity, this book could help inspire you for your companion.
If your dog is on restricted exercise, then this book by Sian Ryan and Dr Helen Zulch can benefit.
Horses - A lot of study such as this (click here) is happening on improving equine welfare and this website is a great start for inspiration EQUINE BEHAVIOUR. And I am loving this training centre and dream of working at Terra Nova because of their horse centric ethics, as well as this academy a little closer to home in East Devon.
Rabbits - As mentioned in a previous blog post (see the chocolate bunny one), rabbits require just as much space and mental stimulation as a dog would. This is an excellent resource for upping your game with your rabbit - click HERE
Other pets - As children are the pet owners of the future, help them learn good husbandry, behaviour and training. Training your pet something new is a great to add enrichment and mental stimulation and Behavior Works is an excellent place to start your behaviour journey. And if you have parrots or other feathered friends then this website is a must see - click HERE.
So there you have it, no excuses now, go get 'em tiger and watch how a little goes a long way to improving the well being of the animals we choose to have in our lives! And creating all this fun can be enriching for you, the human too, as you saw from the beagle video.
What is your pet’s favourite interactive toy? I’d love to hear from you.
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