A Dog’s Guide to Happiness

Part Five - Enrichment

The term enrichment means, “the action of improving or enhancing the quality or value of something.” In zoos enrichment is used to help the animals feel more at home, less stressed and more fulfilled. We can do the same for our dogs at home. Their ancestors had thousands of miles of natural land to explore, animals to hunt, and other animals to interact with. So if we want to make them feel more at home and more fulfilled in our modern human world, we can offer them enrichment that mimics the types of things they would have participated in if they were still wolves roaming across the land!

    Some of this enrichment involves tapping into their senses like taste and smell. Other forms of enrichment encourage them to use their natural doggy behaviors like digging and foraging! Whatever the type of enrichment, it allows our dogs to be dogs. The more they are able to express themselves this way, the more mentally tired, calmer, and all around happier they can be. 

Those hikes we talked about earlier are an excellent form of enrichment as well as exercise. Because dogs get to sniff, explore, dig, swim, forage, and socialize, they get to practice the very activities that make them dogs. This tires the mind and enriches the soul. 

Other forms of enrichment include giving your dog puzzle toys to eat their meals out of, snuffle mats to forage for treats in, chew bones to satisfy their teething and gnawing needs, and even mind games like teaching them tricks to work their problem solving abilities!