When talking about stress, most people are referring to the negative effects largely associated with chronic stress. Stress is a normal part of life and nobody can be insulated from it.

Stress responses are experienced at neurobiological, physiological, psychological and behavioural levels. This involves a complex interplay between body and brain systems.

Dogs, like other mammals have similar biological ‘equipment’ for experiencing stress – the parts involved in stress responses are very ancient and likely evolved in more simple creatures. That’s because stress keeps us alive.

If stress keeps us alive, how can it be bad?

Stress acts at a number of different levels, depending on the nature of the stressor. Different stressors elicit different types of stress responses.

Any time the body is faced with challenge, it must produce a response that helps it cope with that challenge. If the individual has the neurobiological, physiological, psychological and behavioural tools…

Food based enrichment is the most popular approach to enrichment for most animals in captivity; it’s probably the easiest and most obvious way to add entertainment to a pet’s life.

Although I’m not a big fan of food bowl feeding, and I do believe that reducing their use generally does good things for pets and their people, we are not going to get religious about this stuff during this program.
You do what works for you and your pet – you are here, adding enrichment to your dog’s life and we are delighted to have you.

Food Based Enrichment

Animals come with installed motor patterns that relate to feeding behaviour. All dogs have inbuilt predatory behaviours that are also found in wild canids including tracking, stalking, chasing, pouncing, biting, dissecting & chewing, caching and consuming.

Various portions of this predatory sequence have been enhanced or inhibited through selective breeding, producing…

In training. In enrichment.

The animal’s behaviour is feedback telling us humans how well we have set up their environment for success. Or not.
It lets us know what we can refine, adjust, improve.

I don’t want to draw too strong a line between training and enrichment, as there is lots of cross over, and how much cross over there is will largely depend on how we do either one.

In enrichment, we take that notion even further than often we allow ourselves to in training. (We should be approaching training in the same manner, but that’s for a different day!)

How the animal chooses to engage, or not, with the enrichment activity or device is up to them. Regardless of our intentions or how we think they should approach the challenge – the animal decides. This allows enrichment to be enriching.

We should have goals, and we should…

With the popularity of discussions of ‘enrichment’ in dog-care, it’s really become very trendy to talk about it and ‘enrichment’ has become a bit of a buzz word.

That has led to some misuse and misapplication of this term, describing activities that are not truly enriching for the individual animal.
And in turn, as is the way within the animal care industries, there has been backlash.
Sigh.

The popularity and awareness of enrichment for dogs is a good thing, but, it’s important that it is implemented correctly to actually help dogs, rather than contribute to harm.

Just giving a dog some puzzle or food dispensing toy doesn’t necessarily equate to enrichment – the only way we can ascertain how enriching enrichment is, is by asking the dog.

Enrichment must be goal oriented (the main goal being, that enrichment must be enriching) and the dog’s behaviour should be observed to ensure…

We gotta talk about health and safety in all our enrichment endeavours. An awareness of what might go wrong will help us keep our pets safe, because, let’s face it, they don’t always look to keep themselves safe!

Dogs will injure themselves in all sorts of ways, especially when it comes to edibles or things they think should be edible…

What follows are general tips but there may be more specific guidelines appropriate to your pet. There will also be more specific safety tips with particular challenges. But, the bottom line is, you need to know your dog and their tendencies.

• Always supervise pets with puzzles.
  Again, knowing your pet is important here – there are some things that can be given to some dogs to keep them busy when alone. Choosing appropriate toys or devices will need to be appropriate to the dog’s size and chewing/play style. Toys or…

The 100 Day Project has been running for a number of years, specifically in relation to IT/tech stuff, creativity and the arts, and on social media #100day challenges have been applied to various areas, including dog training.

We started our first run through of #100daysofenrichment in January 2019 and it was so successful that we run it again at the end of 2019 too, to round out the year.

We had RUN3 last year, to help with some of the first rounds of COVID-19 lockdown to help us all have some fun and distraction. Corona related lockdown and distress continues so here we are, with RUN4!

Cutting down on social contact, isolation, staying put, along with the stress of health fears, financial responsibilities, can have massive impacts on mental health.

I am hoping that #100days will facilitate increased positive interactions with pets, providing a valuable social outlet for both species.