K-9 Enrichment found on Doberman talk

[papbouv]

From here: Raising K9: Enrichment

Every dog craves a little enrichment in her life. It’s one of the few things that takes little time on the human's part, and gives immediate joy to the dog. My dogs love an opportunity to engage in new and novel tasks. I almost never recycle a plastic container or cardboard box without first using it as an enrichment toy.

My dogs get to lick the vestiges of cream cheese from the tub, or gravy from dinner plates, or wrangle a few kibbles out of a cardboard milk carton before it gets recycled. It is the suburban equivalent of two hard-wired dog behaviors: foraging and shredding. I enjoy giving my dogs any chance to simply be more of a dog.

Enrichment relieves stress and boredom, improves the quality of the dog's life, helps decrease destructive behavior and channels frustration in to legal activities. I think that dogs need outlets for their natural behaviors, social interaction, sensory stimulation and exercise, but balanced with quiet time.

Kinds of enrichment vary, but I like to use housing changes such rearranging crates, passing out novel toys or objects, or exploring activities that allows my dogs to engage in species appropriate activities. I play music -mostly classical, the radio, stories or desensitizing CDs for my dogs as audio enrichment.

Enrichment can require a dog to learn or to problem solve by extracting treats from food-dispensing devices or engaging in positive-reinforcement training. Enrichment can be stimulating a dog's sense of smell by playing nose games like tracking, scent articles or hide and seek. Or you can put towels, that were scented by rubbing the towel on another animal or novel person, in the dog crate. You can use a different scent for each day of the week.

Chew toys of novel textures can be enriching. I like to freeze meat and kibble in ice cubes or pass out frozen raw beef rib bones. You can have a different chew toy for each day of the week. Variety is key to the success of enrichment, and is itself enriching.

If you have a dog friendly dog, enrichment could include interactions other dogs such as playing with other dogs, walking with other dogs, or getting to greet other dogs (off lead.) If your dog is not dog friendly, enrichment could include getting to sniff the places where other dogs have been.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Give the dog almost empty plastic peanut butter jars, sour cream and cream cheese containers.
Put up a Spring Pole for you dog to tug.
Tuck a few pieces of kibble into a piece of paper or paper bag and then scrunch up the paper around the kibble.
Put kibble in plastic jugs such as empty water bottles or milk jugs.
Place some kibble inside cardboard tubes left of from paper towels, gift wrap or bathroom tissue. You can flatten or fold the ends of the tubes to increase the challenge of extracting the kibble. To make the puzzle harder, put it in a box filled with kibble wrapped paper.
Freeze diluted broth and kibbles in small paper cups.
Rotate toys every few days. Note the ones that you dog likes best as it’s not enrichment if the dog doesn’t interact with the toy. Have a mix of toy types such as balls, stuffies, chews and squeakies.
Change your dog walk route every week or every day.
Hide food stuffed toys for the dog to find.
Fill a wading pool for splashing in the summer.
Purchase animal scents (e.g. rabbit, quail, squirrel, etc.) to stray around your yard.
Play Hide and Seek. Have you dog hunt for you.
If you have the space put in a play yard with tunnels, barrels, plastic play houses, plastic baby pools, plastic dog houses to make the area environmentally interesting. (Or take your dog to play on the equipment at the tot lot when there aren't any children using it. Via LOVES the playground.
Build the dog a sand box either by sectioning off a 4-5 foot square area in your yard or buy a small kiddy pool and filling it with sand. Bury toys for your dog to discover.
Provide some Scent Sticks, plastic PVC pipes from the hardware store fitted with removable end caps, filled with smelly stuff such as rabbit or guinea pig bedding or horse, sheep, or cat poop. The dog can’t remove the contents.
Train your dog for 5 minutes out of every 60 that you are home and awake. Teaching tricks would be a great choice.


Spend a week or two giving your dog her entire daily ration of food during training or from enrichment devices and games. See what works and what doesn’t for your dog. Add more of what works, and remove what doesn't. Your dog will love you for it. __________________