Doggy Enrichment Lands

Being calm is really important for both your optimal health and for your dog's optimal health and development. Especially when we consider the sensory sensitivities of dogs and how this can impact them from day to day.

Creating a safe and comforting space for your dog can be so beneficial for your dog and for you! Building safe spaces for my dogs throughout the home is a kind of cathartic experience. Ensuring in each room that they have the opportunity to relax, feel safe and comfortable and focusing on creating really nice spaces in rooms such as the living room and bedroom and the craft room.

The craft room has the backdoor so the dogs have both the opportunity to go outside and fully relax in this room, they can take themselves away from the business of the home and relax or play outside or they can also relax upstairs or in the living room.

You can make a basic space or you can really go all out, for example the dogs love watching TV and cartoons, so they have disney - stitch themed everything, mostly for myself and my personality but I feel that by working on a theme for them, that it kind of reflects the effort and the love and care put into these projects for them.

Many people worry you need a big house to do this, but I don't have a big home and I have just incorporated spaces within the rooms that I do have which gives them lots of choice and space. Sometimes we all just want our own space to a degree don't we?

As well as a dog bed, toys and blankets I also made home made wax melts with lavender, chamomile and clary sage for soothing aromatherapy for them, we also use pet remedy diffusers (I'll drop a discount code in for you at the end).
They also have a TV, white noise machine, radio and fairy lights, so you can make the space as elaborate or basic as you like, you choose if you want to have a theme or if you want the space to match the aesthetic of your decor. There is no right or wrong way to build a space as long as you feel your dog is comfortable!

This is so important to ensure that if your dog has a negative experience they can decompress over the next few days with choice of freedom of movement and choosing where they feel safest to enter into deep sleep, rest and recover from the experience whilst the hormones and brain chemicals are levelling back out.

Exploring any environmental triggers within the home is important to ensure your dog can truly relax. If there are construction workers at home, or a neighbours the noises and smells can often cause some dogs distress, neighbours who utilise bark machines can cause dogs distress and interfere with them being able to relax, dogs next door and barking, growling etc from the dog(s) next door can also trigger your dog's, loud traffic and so on.

When we identify these triggers we can then do our best to eliminate them, but of course not everything is within our control, if you find your dog is barking from the window, window privacy film can really help in blocking out visual triggers.

If your dog is affected by environmental sounds, playing a white noise machine and a radio simultaneously can help them to not hear the environmental sounds.

If your dog is affected by a dog challenging them through the fence for example, adding a secondary perimeter away from the neighbours fence, with a second fence or bushes or an additional perimeter based on your budget can also help your dog in reducing stress for them. You can also make a sensory garden for them within the new perimeter.

Sometimes being within the situation like any situation is that you don't always consider all of the different triggers, this can be because of the stress, because you're in the situation and tired and we all benefit from a fresh pair of eyes and perspective concerning stressful situations.

Utilising enrichment within these spaces can also really help them to decompress and shake off the negative emotions from the negative experience, enrichment can aid nervous or anxious dogs in building confidence and optimism and enrichment is just fun and stimulating too.

But enrichment like anything in dog training can be misunderstood. This is because every dog is individual and unique and not all dogs will enjoy the same benefits from any one type of enrichment.

A recent study found that stuffed food enrichment wasn't as impactful for military working dogs on changing their behaviour or meeting their welfare needs when it came to behaviour. Gaines. S.A, et al (2008).

Studies have also found that for some dogs food enrichment does help with reductions in barking and stress and other studies have found that social interaction when the human is involved in the enrichment shows that dogs had greater sociability, decreased cortisol concentrations and increased relaxation. Belpedio. C, et al. (2010).

Researchers looked into assistance dog's within an office setting and how enrichment affected their behaviour following different types of enrichment. The behaviours that they wanted to examine was a reduction in stress and barking and if enrichment provided relaxation and less anxious behaviour such as waiting for a noise to alert to.

This included stuffed food items, human involved enrichment, and a bubble machine. The findings were that although the dogs are and appeared to enjoy the stuffed food items, the greatest changes in the behaviour were from the bubbles which also included scent as the bubbles were bacon flavoured and human interaction enrichment such as tug or enrichment games played with the human. Hunt, R.L., Whiteside et al, (2022).

So it's much better to engage in a variety of enrichment activities to help a dog to meet their biological needs and as a dog owner (guardian) see marked changes in behaviour over all.

I have worked with many people who share that their dog doesn't like food stuffed enrichment or isn't food motivated and this is completely valid and understandable.

Many times a dog isn't food motivated in 9 out of 10 of these cases because the dog has separation anxiety and is simply too anxious and stressed to eat when in this state, just like us,or there are visitors in the home or there are noises that are causing the dog to feel unsettled.

But there are things that can be done to help a dog with feelings of anxiety for whatever reasons, such as a tailored separation anxiety plan as generalised behaviour advice doesn't work for every dog because of all dogs being individuals.

Enrichment can be done as a part of a dog's daily routine and bringing down cortisol levels, which can help our dog's to have healthier and more enriched lives.

So if you are struggling with your dog feeling uncomfortable with visitors, the neighbours dog, not being able to monitor your dog whilst occupied with work or other activities, resource guarding issues etc, setting up a Doggy Enrichment Land really can be a huge game changer for the whole family and benefit your dog in a multifaceted way! Michaels. L. (2022)

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References

1. Gaines, S.A.; Rooney, N.J.; Bradshaw, J.W. The effect of feeding enrichment upon reported working ability and behavior of kenneled working dogs. J. Forensic. Sci. 2008, 53, 1400–1404.
2. Belpedio, C.; Buffington, L.; Clusman, S.; Prete, F.; Sadler, A.; Whittemore, L.; Mungre, S. Effect of Multidog Play Groups on Cortisol Levels and Behavior of Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) Housed in a Humane Society. J. Appl. Compan. Anim. Behav. 2010, 4, 15–27.
3. Hunt, R.L., Whiteside, H. and Prankel, S. (2022) Effects of environmental enrichment on dog behaviour: Pilot study, MDPI. Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/12/2/141/htm#B25-animals-12-00141
4. Michaels, L. (2022). The do no harm dog training and behavior handbook: Featuring the hierarchy of dog needs. Do No Harm Dog Training. PP. 262 - 270