How To Use Your Dog’s Dinner For Enrichment
In my previous blog I talked about how mental stimulation helps your dog to become a calmer dog. Here are some more ways that you can enrich your dogs life to make them happier and calmer.
Scatter Feeding
Rather than giving your dog food in a bowl you could use some of your dog’s food and scatter it about the grass and let your dog go to find it. You’ve probably seen how Cinderella feeds the chickens, harness your inner Cinderella and scatter some of your dog’s breakfast or dinner in the grass or patio for your dog. Just make sure that you don’t scatter food anywhere that has stones or gravel or other things that could potentially be ingested by accident.
Snuffle Mats
A Snuffle mat is basically a rubber mat with lots of strips of fleece tied to it. They are designed to mimic grass and are great for days that scattering food in, when the garden isn’t appropriate or if you don’t have grass. You can hide treats or their food in the snuffle mat for them to find. Dogs love it because they get to use their natural sniffing and scavenging abilities.
Stuffed Kong
Stuffed Kongs are a must in our household they are calming and depending on how you pack it, it can keep your dog entertained for around 15-30 mins.
The main thing to remember with stuffed kongs is that dogs need to learn how to empty them so don’t increase the difficulty too quickly. If you feed dry food start by packing it with a some of your dog’s dinner and a bit of natural yogurt or peanut butter to help the food stay in and let your dog work out how to empty it. To increase the difficulty you can even soak your dog’s dry food so that it change to more of a paste and pack that into the kong.
If you feed raw then kongs work great with the raw completes. I personally like to use the Natures Menu raw complete nuggets and push them into the kong either defrosted or still frozen.
Raw doesn’t suit everyone, we also use a natural cooked dog food from Butternut Box which also is great for stuffing in a kong. To find out more and to try some of their meals for your pup, use my 75% off discount through butternutbox.com/Paws2Pawfection and order your first box today.
Got To Roll It
Place some food or treats on a towel and roll it up and place it on the floor to encourage your dog to find them and praise them when they manage to get some of the food.
Enjoy!