What Your Dog Needs More Than Exercise

There are two ways I can walk around the same block. 

On one, we actually walk. We keep a decent pace; I get my steps in.

On the other, we make it approximately nowhere.

We stop at the first patch of grass, then a tree, a telephone pole, then another patch of grass that looks exactly like the first one. We cross the street because something over there apparantly requires immediate investigation, and ten minutes later, we circle back to where we started.

For a long time, I thought the first walk was the better one. More distance, more exercise, you get the drift.

Most of us are pretty good at thinking about how much exercise our dogs get. 

Did they go for a walk? Run around the yard? Play fetch? Get enough movement to burn some energy?

What we tend to miss is the mental piece. Physical and mental stimulation are not interchangeable. The goal is not to choose between the two. 

They need both.

Some dogs make this very obvious

Certain breeds practically advertise the fact that they need a job.

Australian Shepherds, Border Collies, German Shepherds, retrievers, and other working breeds were developed to spend their days making decisions, following scents, retrieving, herding, watching, searching, and responding to what was happening around them.

Give a dog like that plenty of physical exercise but very little to think about, and you may still have a dog wandering around the house looking for employment.

The employment may not be one you approve of😬.

But mental stimulation is not just for working breeds.

Every dog has a brain built to interact with the world. Breed, age, personality, health, and energy level all change what that looks like, but sniffing, searching, chewing, exploring, learning, and making choices are normal parts of being a dog.

Enrichment is simply giving them appropriate ways to do those things.

Sniffing counts

One of the easiest forms of enrichment is also the one dogs are constantly asking us to let them do.

Sniff.

Dogs gather an enormous amount of information through scent. What looks like a completely ordinary patch of grass to us can tell a dog who has been there, how recently they passed through, and whether anything has changed since the last visit.

I have started thinking of it as their version of social media.

They are checking who has been around, what happened while they were gone, and whether anyone new has shown up in the neighborhood. Apparently, some posts require several minutes of careful reading.

This is why I try to leave room for sniffing instead of making every walk about distance. Some walks are faster. Some involve an unreasonable amount of time at one telephone pole. Both have a place.

Give them something to figure out

Mental stimulation does not need to become another complicated dog-parent task.

You can hide treats around a room and tell your dog to find them. Scatter kibble through the grass. Roll food loosely inside an old towel. Put a treat in one of several cardboard boxes and let them search.

Food toys are useful for the same reason. A snuffle mat, puzzle feeder, lick mat, or treat-dispensing toy turns something your dog was already going to get into an activity.

The goal is not to make it impossibly difficult. If your dog cannot solve the puzzle, you have mostly just invented a frustrating way to eat dinner.

Start easy. Let them get the idea. Then make it a little harder.

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