Frustrate Your Dog This Year
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We recently moved. Everything we owned was in a box somewhere. Never the box we were looking in, of course - but SOME box somewhere. I should have labeled things better. Eventually, I found everything.
But I noticed something happening with my dogs during the move that made me pause and think. They were LOVING exploring the new house, the boxes, the new location of their beds (which I moved several times before settling on their current locations), the location of their crates, food and water bowls, furniture - everything was new and exciting to them and they were anxious to check it out.
That reminded me of something I heard from Dr. Daniel Mills in a seminar more than a year ago. He mentioned that it was good for dogs mental health to experience ongoing change. He suggested going home and moving their beds to a new location and changing their location occasionally in the future. I did that for a while, but then I didn’t keep it up.
Same with food puzzles…I did it really regularly for a while, and then sort of slacked off. Juno excels at figuring out how to open drawers, pull levers/string, flip switches, roll things around, or whatever else it takes to get a food toy to give up a few bites. She’s happy to search for her dinner scattered around the house or in the yard. She clearly enjoys working for her food and I should give her more opportunities to do it.
Changing things up and making things a little confusing - or even a little frustrating - is good for our minds. We humans have so many enjoyable opportunities to be frustrated. Crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, word or math puzzles, Rubik’s cubes, mysteries (whether in book or movie format), sports, and riddles are all fun in part because of the way they make our brains pause, get a wee bit frustrated, and figure things out. It would be boring if every single word in a crossword puzzle came to us without thought every time we did them.
Giving our dogs a chance to say, “well, this is interesting - I’ll have to figure this out” is good for them.
We often talk about “enrichment” for our dogs. I daresay that there’s a certain level of beneficial frustration in every one of those enrichment options.
You may need to help your dogs learn to do some things. Joker used to get too frustrated and would walk away from puzzles that were too hard. But as I give him a little help, I see him getting more comfortable, confident, and tenacious when faced with something new.
If you’re looking for ideas, I encourage you to check out a Facebook group called Canine Enrichment (they have a book by the same name).