In this challenging time of self-quarantine, it is important to keep your dog calm and healthy. A personalized enrichment program can improve your animal’s physical and psychological health, just by making changes in your pet’s environment and considering his or her individual personality

It is always important to support dogs in your care with enrichment opportunities. A wealth of research demonstrates that stress levels increase when enrichment is not provided to animals in shelters confined to the home or crates. Behaviors such as hyperarousal, depression, and obsessive/compulsive behaviors are not uncommon when enrichment is absent.

Dogs and puppies may display behaviors that make adoptions more challenging simply because these canines are not given the opportunity to chew, exercise their bodies and minds; or, have the opportunity to make choices in their environment. This is especially true for canines with behavioral challenges.

Environmental enrichment is practiced in a variety of ways. One of the frequently-made mistakes is to generalize a species’ personality and emotional characteristics based on its breed. Animals are as individual as humans. Sure, there are some characteristics common to a specific species, but there are many more differences than similarities between individual animals. 

Environmental enrichment is the stimulation of the brain by its physical and social surroundings

I  work with each animal according to its personality, moods, and emotional needs. I find that emotional enrichment not only heightens the behavioral enrichment and acts as an important adjunct to it, but if both are practiced simultaneously, they substantially improve the emotional and physical lives of the individuals involved.

We can identify six categories of enrichment:

• Social Enrichment

  provides the opportunity for your dog to spend time with other dogs, animals, and people, both indoors and outdoors.

• Cognitive 

  provides the opportunity for thinking and problem-solving activities that challenge the brain. 

  • Mental stimulation

  • Training sessions

  • Troubleshooting skills

• Emotional 

  Supportive games satisfy your dogs emotional needs, through interpersonal connection.

  • Visual emotional games 

  • Teaching gestures 

  • Responding to emotional cues

• Physical

  This is anything that enhances your dog’s living space. Adding new things to your dog’s environment can help to keep things a little more interesting.

  • exercise, running, climbing, resting spots, obstacles, size of living areas

• Sensory stimulation

  provides interaction with the environment and stimulates the brain.

  • Tactile- manipulating items, digging

  • Olfactory- packaged scent, natural scent 

  • Auditory - vocalization, white noise, music, sounds

• Visual stimulation

  helps your dog relate to the environment and perceive visual communication.

  • Blow bubbles or throw colored balls to provide visual stimulation, you can even use liver or peanut-butter scented bubbles for a multi-sensory experience. Here these puppies are playing with the scented bubbles in their kennel

• Food

  By using your dogs’ taste buds, nose, and brain, you can encourage them to use their natural hunting and foraging skills at mealtimes.

  • Novel food- protein  rotation, veggies, fruits 

  • Presentation- puzzle feeding, hidden, scattering,

  • Temperature - frozen or room temperature

How do you enrich your dog(s)?

Let’s explore how you can use these six areas to create valuable enrichment for your pet with my 30-day challenge! Message me to get started on a personalized enrichment program for your dog, on your budget.