Enrichment: exercise and activity

What to Do:

• Allow your dog to opt in or out of an activity, focus on offering activities they enjoy.  Include variety to keep things fresh.

• Rewards based training is effective to teach skills, manners, tricks and address behavior concerns. It should be fun for you and your dog, and doubles as enrichment.

• If your dog is over excited and has trouble settling down and moving on from activities like playing fetch or tug, keep play sessions short and be ready with a food toy or chew to help them disengage.  Compulsive play behavior is not what fun enrichment looks like.

• Avoid doing high arousal activity 30 minutes prior a situation in which you will need your dog to be calm.  

• Focus on meeting your dog's needs vs trying to be fair in a multi-dog household.

• Take care relying on group dog play for enrichment. Not all dogs prefer or enjoy interacting with unfamiliar dogs, group play, or unfamiliar people. Observe their behavior to assess if they are enjoying and want to continue the interaction each time your dog participates in these activities.  Making them do these activities does not teach them to enjoy them more.

• Supervise when offering new toys to be sure they are safe, some items will not be appropriate for free choice or may need close supervision. 

• Avoid offering toys when unfamiliar dogs are present, most dogs will want to protect their toys. Very high value toys should only be offered when separated from other pets, so they can enjoy it in peace. 

• Toys for feeding and interactive play (fetch/tug/chase) should be kept up unless you are playing with them.  This prevents them from destroying these toys and make them high value (more fun) when you bring them out. 

• When playing or training one dog in a multidog household, put other dogs in a different area so you can interact one on one.  Rotate through the dogs to give each of them a chance to play and bond with you.

• A tired dog may not be a well behaved dog – the better way think about it is that a satiated dog is a good dog. Physical exhaustion should not be the goal of a good enrichment plan. Meet needs for physical, mental and social activity.

• Walks (or any other specific type of enrichment) are not necessary for every dog. If an activity is stressful, it is ok to replace them with other activities. Reach out to a behavior professional if you would like to work with your dog to help them feel comfortable with an activity they do not enjoy.

• Playing tug does not cause aggression.  Keep the game gentle and fun – start with dragging the toy away to invite play.  High energy tug that triggers jumping and biting is not necessary.