Dog Enrichment Activities at Home
*Note: Join us this Saturday, March 28th, at 11:00am EDT on our Facebook page for a live training on how to keep your pup enriched and engaged at home during the COVID-19 Stay-at-Home order. Click here for event page.
Walk, crosswords, massage, & repeat. That is a routine I know I would love from time to time. What if I told you that describes a fun routine to help bond with your furry friends AND help them stay busy while you are home?
These past few weeks have definitely been stressful. For some of us, we are attempting to work from home. For others, we have found ourselves having more time on our hands due to businesses being closed. Overall, we are all spending time trying to keep ourselves and our family healthy and happy. And that definitely includes our fur-babies!
How can we do this? By creating fun ways to help exercise our dogs both mentally and physically.
Physical exercise is often the easier of the two to think of however, due to the current situation with Covid-19 we are limiting our time spent outside. Daily walks are a great way to exercise our pups but they also give us some time to de-stress and bond with our dogs. Both for us and our dogs, finding alternatives to physical exercise is important. One of those activities I have added to my girls’ daily routine is brain games!
Brain games are a fun and easy way to help tire our dogs out by engaging their minds. Many sites offer products you can purchase or options to DIY at home. Things like LickiMats and Kongs are toys that involve smearing peanut butter or baby food, and the dog spends time trying to lick all the food out of the toy. (Freezing the toys with the food on them increases the amount of time your pup will spend enjoying their treat!) Other options include snuffle matts and puzzle toys, which are creative ways to hide treats for your dog to find.
Watching your pup’s weight? You can always hide their food in the toys to help decrease the concern of eating too many treats! If food toys are not an option, you can practice their obedience skills or teach them something new! My pups are always up for refresher courses in sitting, lying down, or giving paw.
A second way to relax our dogs and allow us to have some bonding time is to incorporate daily massage. Now I know what some of you may be thinking, what is a dog massage and how would I even begin to massage my dog? We use many of the same techniques we have learned working with people on our dogs. TheK9PT even has an online course dedicated to teaching clients how to massage and exercise our four legged friends. An added bonus is that dogs often feel tired and ready to nap after a good massage! Which will help give you some time to get work done during the day!
Adding some of these brain games and massage into your pup’s daily routine will help to keep them happy and healthy, and allow us to have that crucial time in our day to spend some good quality time with our dogs.
Join us this Saturday, March 28th, at 11:00am EDT on our Facebook page for a live training on how to keep your pup enriched and engaged at home during the COVID-19 Stay-at-Home order. Click here for event page.
~TheK9PT Team
Dr. Kristin Massey , PT, DPT
