Enrichment: Engage your dog's brain and utilize their 5 senses

Why is mental enrichment important?

Just like other intelligent creatures, mental enrichment improves our dog's quality of life and helps fight off boredom, anxiety and other behavior problems. It's also more tiring than physical exercise! I've said it before- our modern world has evolved faster than our dogs. Many dogs were bred to perform jobs and now have no opportunity to fulfill their natural instincts. This is one of the many causes that contributes to behavior problems- the Australian Shepherd without sheep might choose to herd your family's young children instead, or the husky without a sled to pull might destroy things to stay occupied. Enrichment can be designed to take the place of breed specific jobs or to engage your dog's critical thinking skills and 6 senses. 

How to create enrichment programs 

When I look to create enrichment programs, I'm evaluating what needs a dog has that aren't being met and which of the 6 senses they use most. For example, Margo is a mutt- but has many herding breed instincts- and likes to use her nose to track. So, our enrichment programs include lots of chasing, herding objects (like my ducks) and using her nose to find things. Some ideas for utilizing the 5 senses: 

• Nose: hide treats, create puzzle boxes, scent work, find other family members, go on walks to sniff the environment, diffuse dog-safe essential oils 
• Sight: dog TV, going to the park to people/dog watch, playing catch/fetch 
• Hearing: dog TV, people/dog watching at the park, music, audio clips
• Taste: hiding different flavored treats, frozen pupsicles, frozen kongs, lickimats/lickibowls, puzzle boxes 
• Touch: touch for dogs is often similar to taste since they use their mouth like we use hands - so taste goes along well with touch, but also grooming, petting, massage, and other forms of physical affection/contact that you dog likes are all good ideas 

Recycled goods puzzles

This is my favorite type of enrichment to create! I collect specific types of recycling to utilize for these puzzles: toilet paper tubes, paper towel tubes, boxes, paper bags, egg cartons, plastic clamshell containers, and water bottles. The idea is to create varying levels of difficult by stacking, hiding, creating cutouts and being creative to let you dog hunt out their favorite snack. At first, you want to create really simple puzzles that your dog can solve. As they get more confident and figure out how the game works, you can increase the difficulty to keep them engaged. The goal is to get them using their brain and their senses to think critically and solve the puzzle- let them shred, roll, destroy and have fun! Remember to monitor your dog so that they do not ingest any of the recycling. 

Nose work

Did you know that in dogs, the area of the brain dedicated to olfaction (smelling) is 40x larger than humans? This means that while we see the world through our eyes, they see it through their nose! Tapping into this natural ability can be a great way to give your dog a job, fulfill them and tire them out. The process is fairly simple:

1. Teach your dog the behavior you'd like them to demonstrate when they find the scent. Some examples include sitting, laying down, barking, bowing, or anything else you'd like. 
2. Present the scent you want to use to your dog. When they engage with it, give them the cue for your chosen behavior and reward when they do it. Practice a bunch!
3. Once your dog really has the idea that scent + cue = behavior, start to phase out the verbal cue. Present the scent to your dog and wait a few seconds before giving the verbal cue. You're transitioning the verbal cue to the scent now. 
4. Once your dog has associated the smell with the behavior (without your verbal cue), start moving the scent around. Put it on the ground, on a coffee table, in an open box- make sure the scent article or container remains visible, and reward them for finding it and presenting the behavior. You might have to remind them to give the cue when they find the scent- that's okay! Stay at that difficulty level until they start presenting the behavior with only the scent and without the verbal cue. 
5. Keep creating slightly harder challenges for your dog and making sure they succeed. If they start to struggle, take a step or two backwards and start with an easier task.
6. Use lots of rewards: treats, play, praise- you want to create an amazing emotional response to finding the scent article! 

Enrichment toys

Kongs, lickimats, lickibowls and other food toys can be great brain activities for our dogs. There's lots of resources online for how to stuff them, what food items to use and how to keep your dog engaged with them. Remember- you can freeze them to make them more challenging too! 

Training

Finally, training can be an amazing way to bond with your dog and use their brain. I'm preferential to free shaping/clicker training for brain games. Did you ever play hot-and-cold as a kid? Your game partner would pick out an object in a room and tell you hot or cold as you got closer to or further away from the object. We can do the same thing to teach our dogs tricks with a clicker! The process looks like this:

1. Charge your clicker so your dog learns click= treat
2. Decide on a task or behavior you'd like your dog to learn and break it up into tiny tasks
3. When your dog makes any sort of motion/action that could correctly lead them towards completing the task (tiny steps), click and reward. Repeat the click and reward for a few times until your dog understands exactly what they've done correctly. 
4. Up the ante and wait to click until they take another tiny step towards completing the final tasks. Repeat your clicks and rewards at this level until they've got the picture. 
5. Continue repeating these steps until you reach your final goal or your dog is tired and wants to take a break 

Example: 
My goal: I want Margo to retrieve a water bottle for me. 
The steps:

• Look in the direction of the bottle
• Look at the bottle
• Move towards the bottle
• Sniff/engage/touch the bottle
• Lick/put mouth on the bottle
• Pick the bottle up
• Pick bottle up and take a step
• Pick bottle up and walk towards me
• Pick bottle up and bring it to me
• Pick bottle up, bring it to me and hand it to me 
• Complete the behavior as one fluid motion

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