The Science Behind Mental Enrichment for Dogs

While mental enrichment can feel like a fun 'buzzword', it's important to know what research has shown about mental exercise for dogs! In this episode, I give a synopsis and my opinions on research done by Lidewij L.Schipper (amongst others) in 2008. Here's a link to the article where you can learn more about the research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159108000038 Note: The researchers themselves said that the study is not completely thorough, could use more work, and had a relatively small sample size. Nonetheless, the findings are valuable. The researchers ran the tests on 8 dogs in shelters. They gave the dogs Kong toys filled with treats to test the effects that interaction had on the dog's behavior.  In the researchers' words, here is what they had to say: "This study demonstrated that the presence of these food enrichment toys stimulates appetitive behaviours and increases the level of activity (exercise), measured in terms of time budgets and the total number of behavioural transitions. Moreover, it also appears to result into lower barking frequencies." That is a GREAT finding! Appetitive behavior is essentially behaviors that proceed eating and are a signal of 'desire'. This can include sniffing, foraging, working for food, etc. So, enrichment for dogs can help them have a greater desire to work for food, increase their activity level (especially important in shelter dogs) and can even help decrease barking. Those are all AMAZING results from just the simple use of a Kong!  Hopefully, this study gives you added reasoning to give your pup mental exercise!  If you're looking for tools for mental enrichment, you can shop our full range here: https://pfrd.site/enrichmenttoyss Please subscribe to hear all podcast episodes in the future! And I'd appreciate it if you left a review :)