Enrichment is essential for physical and mental health for dogs of all ages, breeds & sizes. This activity allows your best mate to engage in natural behaviour such as digging, smelling and foraging. So what is enrichment? Enrichment is any activity that is mentally and physically engaging to your dog’s mind. Engaging with your dogs senses has huge benefits! First of all enrichment activities allow dogs to perform behaviours that are inherent to their breed.

Enrichment has also been proven to promote relaxation, reduce stress & anxiety and help prevent unwanted behaviours. Boredom often leads to destructive behaviours and this can be weighted for more intelligent breeds such as collies and poodles. The best way to fight boredom is with enrichment activities or long lasting chews.

Scent enrichment is key fore reducing stress related behaviours. The best advice would be to let your dog sniff! Don’s can learn so much information through scent - For example did you know by sniffing another dog’s urine, your dog can learn that dog’s gender, age, their neuters status, and stress level?!

A controlled scent enrichment activity would be using snuffle mats and scented toys. Using a snuffle mat is a long lasting way of engaging your dogs nose. By stuffing the mat with treats, you’re allowing your dog to perform their natural nine behaviours.

So what kind of enrichment activities do we offer? We always find Lickimats are the perfect way to help get your dogs brain going. Licking releases endorphins allowing them to destress. Whether you spread liver paste, meat pate, yoghurt or your dogs meal onto their mat, this will provide a more time consuming way to engage your dogs brain. As mentioned above licking is one of the Mose relaxing things for a dog to do, so if they are presented with a mat covered in a tasty treat, they can relax and you can enjoy some peace and quiet,

A honey pot is also a great activity to help engage your dogs brain. A honeypot can be used as a treat dispenser or as a long lasting activity, to help prevent boredom or anxiety. I alway suggest that stuffing a honeypot with your dogs favourite pate, food or paste along with treats such as duck feet, hairy rabbit ears or chicken wings can be a great tool to fight boredom. An even better way for this to last longer is by freeing the treat concoction. This is more recommended in the summer to help cool your dog down.

Our favourite pick of enrichment toys are the burrow toys. These fun and quirky toys are a great way to keep your dog bust. Simply remove the three soft toys from inside, stuff with your preferred training treat or chew and reinsert the toys. This will engage your dogs brain while they work to remove the toys to gain access to the tasty treat you’ve placed inside.

Top Tip: A dog’s full body shake is the best way for them to quickly destress from a situation they are unhappy about. If your dog has been frightened by something, or has been in an environment or subject to people or dogs they find stressful, wait for that shake and you can have the peace if mind that they feel better!

Now that you have all of the tools and information on how to enrich your dogs life, head over to our enrichment page and grab all the things you need for your dogs net activity!