Please Enrich Your Dog’s Environment

This recent cartoon in the New Yorker Magazine reminded me of a documentary I watched at last year’s Aggressive Dog Conference held in Providence RI.  This documentary portrayed the lives of free ranging dogs that lived in developing countries.  What we saw was well adjusted canines exploring, coexisting without aggression and generally appearing fit and content.  For many of us, these dogs might appear in need of “rescue.”  And many people do just that – taking these dogs from that unstructured but enriched environment to perhaps our urban apartment where they are often expected to live without any company for hours each day – “behaving.”  Talk about culture shock!

But even if you don’t have such a rescue, all our dogs benefit from activity.  Whether it’s a sniffari on a long line in our back yards or in a local park or a food dispensing toy or raw meaty bone, or game of hide and seek in our homes or a class where our dogs learn some new skills – we owe it to them to enrich their environments.  It’s just not fair to expect that while we dash from home to work to meetings to our kids’ activities the dog should be content to just hang out.  Such expectations invariably lead to dogs finding their own sources of entertainment or stress relief which does not usually mesh with our lifestyles.

If you need ideas check out Canine Enrichment for the Real World by Allie Bender, CDBC and Emily Strong, CDBC.  While waiting for the book, check out all the neat and easy enrichment ideas and toys on the internet such as those available at Clean Run:  ttps://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.searchResults.  Or contact a positive reinforcement trainer who can give you ideas!