Food is always a great place to start when it comes to enrichment, dogs love to work for their food so using it for training sessions is a great way to not only get them to focus on the task at hand but also ensures they aren’t getting too many extra calories.

We can also use different types of food, for example you can use their normal meal (kibble/wet food/raw), you can also use fresh fruit and veg or alternatively you can use dog specific treats.

When using dry foods like kibble and biscuit treats we can get our dogs to use that amazing nose of theirs to sniff out the food, some ideas would be to scatter feed, this is basically just getting a handful of biscuits and scattering the food in the grass or using a snuffle mat and you can also get puzzle toys especially for dogs which come in a range of styles and difficulty. The action of sniffing and searching actually helps lower your dogs blood pressure and they do this themselves if they are anxious about something, because they are using their senses and their brain to hunt for the food, it will also make them really tired.

If you want to use wet food or if your dog is on a raw diet then you can use things such as lickimats, Kongs or even find natural chews which act as a Kong (see poster). The same principle applies, the licking motion and problem solving helps to keep your dog calm but it is also very tiring work!