How Mental Enrichment Activities Make for a Happier Dog

For years now, the average adult dog’s daily schedule has involved meals, walks and sleep with a bit of playtime every now and then. Pet parents have depended on walks, runs, playing fetch, and other forms of physical activity to ‘tire out dogs’ because it was believed that a tired dog = a calmer dog which is considered to be better behaved. 

However, behaviourists now take a more holistic view of a dog's life, understanding that mental stimulation is just as essential as physical exercise. Behaviours like chewing shoes or excessive barking, often seen as problematic, usually arise from boredom or insufficient engagement.

So, what exactly is mental enrichment for dogs? 

Simply put, mental enrichment is getting your dog to use their mind and their senses more.  This can be achieved in a variety of ways; some using toys and others just engaging with their environment and the beings around them. 

Most breeds that we have as pets today like labradors and beagles were originally bred as working dogs. They used to have jobs that required them to use a particular skill that gave them a considerable amount of mental engagement, nearly every day. Labradors were bred for their incredible ability to swim and assist fishermen in bringing in the day’s catch while beagles are scent hounds. They were employed by hunting parties to sniff out the trail of foxes in Britain. 

Today, beagles, labs and other breeds have no employment except to be the love of our lives, which is lovely but some of their strongest talents are being completely ignored. This could lead to boredom and pent-up energy being poured into troublesome behaviour. 

What can you do about it?

Since your dogs are out of their original jobs, we need to figure out other ways to channel their abilities in the context of your lives. Happily, there are activities that you can organise, and these can even be tailored to suit breed-specific traits. 

Sniffing Games

Your dogs’ sense of smell is probably their most powerful. For every olfactory receptor a human has, a dog has 50. So, when they’re sniffing something, the information they get goes beyond identifying what the scent is. They can usually connect the scent to a particular person, or animal, understand how long ago it was left there and so on. Some dogs have even been trained to identify certain types of cancers in the body. So, the simple act of letting a dog sniff things in their environment is a great way to exercise their mental abilities.

Tip: One of the simplest ways to let your pet exercise this sense is to slow down on their walks. Let them sniff the multitude of scents present along their route and you will come home with a happier, more relaxed dog than from a walk that only focuses on physical exertion. 

Nina Ottosson’s interactive puzzles for dogs are available in a range of different levels. Some are easier to crack while others may take some time. These are all designed to be played with treats and it’s your dog’s job to figure out how to get the treat out of the puzzle. 

Tip: To get your dog started with these puzzles, it helps to use high-value treats. 

Snuffle mats are another way of getting your dog to use their noses. These are very fluffy mats within which you hide dry food or treats that your pet has to sniff out. 

Tip: Some pet parents strategically give their dog a snuffle mat to ‘solve’ when they need to hop on to a Zoom call. 

Slow feeders like the Kong Wobbler or silicone mats are sometimes considered interactive toys as well. With the Wobbler, your dog needs to paw at the toy to get kibble to fall out and this achieves both the ‘puzzle-solving’ aspect and slows down meals for gobblers. 

Tip: While many interactive toys can only be used with dry food, silicone feeding mats can be used for wet food. And there are also smaller-sized mats to use for cats. 

On rainy days or those days when outdoor walks are not possible, many pet parents set up ‘sniffaris’ indoors. The idea is really to recreate a walk indoors and give your dog a variety of smells to sniff - this could include leaves from the garden, twigs, sand, toys etc. A sniffari can also be reduced to being contained in a box. If you don’t have access to the outside, for whatever reason, this makes a lot of sense.

Tip: Another underrated method of keeping playtime interesting is to simply rotate your dog’s toys. You may have noticed that they lose interest in some toys after. But if you put these away for a bit and re-introduce them after a few weeks, their interest is renewed. 

Hide and seek + its variations: Hide a handful of kibble all around a room and let your dog sniff around to find them. Or hide yourself and let your dog find you – this form of hide and seek is closer to the way we played it as children. 

Tip: There are any number of games you could develop this way. For example, ‘pick-the-hand-that-hides-the-treat’ where you hide a piece of food in one of your fists and let your pet ‘guess’ which one it could be. Or hide treats under a blanket and get your pet to find them. 

Chewing activities

Chewing is another natural activity for dogs, it is considered to be mentally engaging, and it tends to calm them as well. So, chews, rope toys and other chewable playthings are a good, low-effort way to give your dog some mental enrichment. 

Chews could range from regular Yakies to rubber chews from Kong, rope toys or even dental chews. 

Tip: These chews have the additional benefit of cleansing your pet’s teeth of some of the plaque that may have formed there. 

Toys like plushies with squeakers built-in simulate the sound of prey and appeal to your dog’s natural instinct to pounce. It adds a bit of drama to their games. 

Tip: An important thing to keep in mind is that different dog toys were developed with different levels of chewers in mind. So, when choosing plush toys, rope toys or chews, you need to also consider the bite strength of your dog to match it with the durability of the toy. 

Breed specific activities

While it is essential to give your pets a routine that they can depend on, it’s also great to give them a refreshing change every now and then. Just as it is excellent for us humans to shake up our routines to avoid feeling like we’re in a rut.

You may notice that your pet already leans towards certain activities that their breed was historically bred for. Going back to our earlier examples of labradors and beagles, the former love to swim or while the latter appreciate scent-based games. Cocker spaniels were hunting companions and very athletic so they need plenty of activity to keep them content.

Training activities also require your pet to use their minds. So, you could incorporate training into their routines for this purpose.