Food Enrichment

We all have been there. On days where we can’t be asked to take our dogs on their usual walk. Maybe it’s raining, maybe it’s cold, maybe the day was just particularly hard. But we have gotten home, fed the pets, and they just won’t leave us alone. Jumping off the walls, begging to go out on their usual walk. And we can’t blame them, can we? They have been sitting around all day long, waiting for us to get home so they can stretch their legs and sniff the world around them. This is where feeding enrichment can be a life saver.

CW: This article contains the mention of whole prey feeding at the bottom

Puzzle toys

Enrichment can serve as a useful tool to fill in some time when we cannot get our pets out. Enrichment can be gained through many different and creative ways. For most this includes using some form of puzzle toy to make feeding time an opportunity for enrichment. Lick mats, snuffle mats, Kongs, West Paw Toppls, Ruffwear Gnawt-a-Rocks all can serve as tools to enrich feeding time. They can easily be stuffed with everything from peanut butter to raw food and everything in between. Freezing the toys can lengthen enrichment time as well as allow you to use more liquidy stuff items like goat milk or bone broth. Toys like the Gnawt-a-Rock can be filled with kibble, treats, or freeze dried food! This lengthens a typical meal session and forces our pets to work for their food. Another enrichment method that is totally FREE is just hiding treats around the house and having your pet work to find them.

Getting creative and using things differently will always help to keep our pets on their toes and keep them from getting bored, or worse, cracking the code of a particular toy. Stuffing toys in layers and freezing them is one great way to make toys more difficult for even the brainiest of pets. Keeping a variety of puzzle toys or feeding methods can also help to diversify their enrichment times.

More complex puzzle toys can be found in our Boredom Buster section. With some patience and practice, these can be a great and complex tool to bring enrichment to their feeding times. These toys have varying levels of difficulty and often require one or more steps to solve. These can be great options for the brainiest of pups when simple lick mats just aren’t cutting it.

Recreational Chews

Recreational chews are yet another method to improve enrichment. Recreational chews can be everything from bully sticks to frozen raw bones. Of course, recreational chews should be fed under supervision and always be suited for the dog. A Chihuahua shouldn’t be given a lamb leg and an Akita Inu shouldn’t be given a chicken neck. A dogs bite strength, chewing intensity, and propensity to try to swallow things should always be considered when introducing new chews. Hand feeding new chews can be a good way to teach your pet how to properly chew all the while allowing you to learn their chewing style. Recreational chews are a vital enrichment opportunity for our little carnivores because it stimulates their natural need for ripping and gnawing (they can’t actually “chew”) and can help keep their teeth clean.

Whole Prey

Whole prey feeding can be attainable for many sized pets. Although this may not be for the faint of heart but can prove as a wonderful way to enrich our pets every meal. Because we are feeding a whole prey animal to our pets, we can consider them as whole and balanced diets containing all the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids our pets would need. Whole prey food items can include quails, chicks, mice, or rats for small pets such as cats, small dogs, and ferrets. Larger prey items can be rabbits, guinea pigs, or pigeons and can be appropriate for larger dogs. Like recreational chews, but cranked up to 10, whole prey feeding stimulates the natural need for our pets to rip and gnaw. All in the most appropriate way, as they would in the wild.

There are many ways to get more out of feeding and treat time with puzzle toys and the like. There is also always room to be creative in the ways we feed our pets, all of which can really help to improve their everyday life and make our lives with them easier and more fullfilling. Thanks for reading!