Mary Allen
When mum and dad make dog toys themselves or come up with exciting games, the furry friends are usually very happy. Because our four-legged friends simply don’t care how much something costs as long as it meets their needs.
Would you like to keep your dog busy or make your dog toys, but don’t know exactly how? The intelligence toy that you bought for a lot of money is lying in the corner and gathering dust after being used twice? Or are you simply looking for new ideas to keep your dog busy? Here are some ideas on how to keep your dog occupied without having to spend tons of money…
The life of our dogs is often very predictable, which can sometimes creep into boredom. The good news is that you can enrich your dog’s everyday life enormously through enrichment. And you don’t even have to throw yourself into the expense, but with a few tips, you can make life more exciting and prevent boredom.
Enrichment for Dogs – What Is It?
Enrichment ( pedagogical term ) is species-appropriate employment, which includes a mixture of physical and mental activity. We deprive our dogs of much of their mental activity by rarely letting them make decisions on their own and rarely allowing them to take care of their own lives.
We determine when the walk takes place, which route we take, what sport our dog does, and even what our dogs get to eat. And then the food is put into the same food bowl every day, often at the same time and in the same place. Do you find it boring? Your dog might think so too.
But that need not be! You can easily use dog food as an occupation because it is like the dog to spend a part of life obtaining and eating food. So a “Kong” filled with wet food will be a welcome change for your dog. In addition, enrichment can do a lot more: everyday dog life becomes more exciting if you keep asking your four-legged friend small tasks that he can solve himself.
Cheap But Good: Make Your Dog Toys
Many job opportunities can be done cheaply yourself. Don’t just throw away packaging waste, hide food in egg cartons or empty paper towels. The advantage of homemade toys is that they can be ideally tailored to the individual needs and preferences of your dog:
- If your dog likes to sniff, make him a sniffing rug out of old fleece blankets in which to hide food.
- If your dog likes to break down toys, fill a lattice ball with cut fleece or newspaper so your dog can act out his destructiveness without having to buy a new toy every day.
- Puzzle foxes can also present you with somewhat more difficult tasks. For example, fill a plastic bottle with treats, cut two holes in it and stick them on a piece of wood, which you clamp between two chairs. Your dog can now reach the treats by turning the bottle.
Exercise Dogs Properly
Species-appropriate exercise needs to consider and meet the dog’s current needs! As is so often the case, quality comes before quantity here: what matters is not how many tasks your dog gets, but which ones!
You can even use the environment for this free of charge. All you have to do is watch your dog and find out what he likes to do in his free time. From time to time, allow him to do certain things that you might even find annoying in other circumstances. In an appropriate environment, many things can be perfectly permissible. So there are certainly places where it doesn’t bother anyone if your dog digs from time to time or follows an old cat trail.
Let your creativity run free and find out together with your dog what makes him happy.