It’s a beautiful spring day and I’m sitting at the Firefly Coffee House finishing my house-made bagel with peach spice cream cheese schmear (yes, it was good). As I finish scraping the cream cheese out of the small plastic container, I think to myself “I wish Petey was here…” You see, one of my dog’s most important roles in our home is cleaning out items bound for the recycling bin. My next thought was…how unhinged of me would it be to put this in my car so I can take it home to Peter?
In this week’s episode of Enrichment for the Real World, Emily (who would undoubtedly encourage my cream cheese trash caching impulse) discusses exactly how to introduce your pets to the world of DIY pet enrichment. If you’ve never given your pet this type of activity, I suggest you give it a listen!
We’ve covered this topic on the blog in different ways over the years, so if you are unsure why we are all handing our trash over to our pets, here are some great places to start:
- July 2022 Training Challenge: Explore Variety Through a Cardboard Box: Ellen explores different ways to provide foraging opportunities using cardboard boxes, including photo examples of different setups.
- July 2023 Enrichment Challenge: Try a New Active Foraging Option: Ellen provides a variety of options for foraging using common disposable / recyclable items and examples of how you might use them.
- September 2023 Enrichment Challenge: Trial and Eval Calming Foraging Activities Observation is such an important part of enrichment. Here, Ellen discusses how to observe how your dog interacts with new projects, and what to do with that information.
- Budget Friendly Enrichment Options: Ellen really likes to write about trash. This time she compares different toys (that cost money) and some alternatives that do not!
As discussed in most of these blogs as well as on the podcast, any time you provide your pet a new activity, watch them. See how they work on the item. If they ingest non-food items, your trash enrichment opportunities will look different, or they may not be an option for your pet.
Related: If you provide your pet with an item that previously contained food, make sure you read the ingredients so you know it is safe for them. Here is a reference with common ingredients and household items that can be dangerous: Potentially Dangerous Items for Your Pet – US Food & Drug Administration.
Creative Ways to Use Recycled Materials for Enrichment
In a Pet Harmony first (probably?), the whole team is here to share the actual ways we utilize materials that are on their way to the recycling (or trash) bin to encourage species-typical behaviors with the pets in our homes.
If the number of blogs we have (and that list up there isn’t even all of them) that discuss using trash for enrichment doesn’t tell you how common and important these practices are in our households, seeing the overlap in the way we are all using these items might. Here are some of the most common materials and activities I saw in submissions from the team:
- Toilet paper / paper towel tubes: Tuck the ends in on a tube and suddenly it’s a tiny paper pocket. Chuck some treats in there and you can:
- Just hand it over and watch your pet pull the tube apart to get to their snack.
- Hide them around – now you have an activity that encompasses scentwork, foraging, and dissecting (tearing apart).
- Put them inside other items, much like the next point…
- Box in a box in a box / nesting doll boxes: That’s it. Just stuffing food/treats inside of boxes and then putting boxes inside of other boxes.
- Takeout containers: These items come with bonus flavors / scents since they just had food in them!
- Plastic food containers: Ditto on these. Yogurt, cottage cheese, cream cheese, peanut butter…anything your dog can have that comes in a container also comes with a potential activity. Toss them the container and let them clean it out before you chuck it in the recycling/trash bin.
Ellen’s blogs on Budget Friendly Enrichment Options and Explore Variety Through a Cardboard Box describe these activities in more detail.
Why Recycled Enrichment Supports Natural Pet Behaviors
Species-typical behaviors are at the core of enrichment. Ensuring that ANY species living in captivity have outlets for behaviors that are normal and innate is a basic component of welfare. Learning your pet’s species-typical behaviors allows you to find creative but budget-friendly ways to meet their needs. In the sections that follow, you will see how our team uses items described in the previous section (and more!) to allow the species they live with to engage in behaviors that meet their individual needs. Spoilers: it’s not just foraging!
Here are a few examples of species-typical behaviors that we are supporting with, well, junk:
- Emily’s eclectus parrot, Cah’ya, gets curled up plastic straws as a stand-in for another bird to preen
- Taylor’s dogs get to move, stretch, and balance with box obstacle courses
- Bundini the bunny gets to dig and burrow even though he lives indoors at Emily’s house thanks to large cardboard boxes
- MaryKaye’s 17 year old senior citizen (dogizen?), Fonzy, can still shred and dissect like a young pup thanks to toilet paper tubes
- Ellen re-stuffs toys with old scraps of fabric so Griffey and Laika never run out items to dissect
We Love Trash
The time has come! Let’s dig into the trash stash and see what the team gets up to at home. I suggest you put on this inspiring song by Oscar the Grouch while you read.
Emily, Copper, and Miley (plus Bundini the rabbit and Cah’ya the eclectus parrot)
The dogs have their own recycle bin where we put any cardboard or plastic trash that is safe for them to destroy and they get to choose what they want to pull out.
Medium and small cardboard boxes get turned into “russian nesting dolls,” by which I mean I put packing paper and dog treats into the largest box, put the next largest box inside it, then put packing paper and dog treats into that box, put the next largest box inside it, and so on.
Paper towel rolls and toilet paper rolls get stuffed with balled up pieces of packing paper and dog treats for the dogs, packing paper and cage mix for Cah’ya, and hay and alfalfa pellets for Bundini.
Large cardboard boxes get set aside for Cah’ya so she can turn them into her “nest”. She regularly destroys her nests, which allows me to replace them with the next box.
I have a wacky whirly tool for the times when I end up with a plastic straw. I try to avoid straws whenever possible, but when they happen I can use the wacky whirly tool to turn the straw into a springy coil. When I’ve collected enough of them, I tie them all together and hang them in the bird room for Cah’ya to allopreen and/or shred them. The added benefit is that when she’s done with them and they eventually have to be thrown away, they no longer pose a risk to wildlife in their springy-coil state!
Scraps of fabric from any fabric project I’ve got going on end up as bird toys – again for allopreening or shredding – or as knotted tug toys for Miley, my puppy.
Everyone once in a while we get a really gigantic cardboard box – usually when we buy a new piece of furniture or other household item – and I’ll use it to make Bundini’s “burrow.” Since he lives in our house he can’t physically burrow underground, so I cut rabbit-sized holes on either side of the gigantic box, stuff the box full of hay, and let Bundini burrow in the hay in the box. Like Cah’ya, he eventually destroys his burrow boxes, which allows me to replace it with the next gigantic box.
Claire and Olivia
Any possible boxes that are received are always a go to. I also use paper towel/toilet paper rolls, packing paper, and paper bags – especially from takeout! Since she’s on the smaller side, if we get a large box, I will fill it with treats and paper, and encourage her to get inside of it and rummage which she loves.
I like to also use toys Olivia hasn’t paid attention to in a while and stuff all the trash into those.
I’m a big fan of letting Olivia sniff “safe trash” outside because she loves to sniff and check it out for a while. I think it also builds her confidence.
We also were gifted a nice comforter in a plastic carrying bag and it ripped on the side, so she would crawl into it and roll around which I found hilarious. I left it there forever to entertain her.
Tiffany Chen and Sihtric
I like to collect recyclables like cardboard boxes, paper towel tubes, paper bags, and the packing paper from Chewy boxes. I stash them in a big bag in the kitchen. On days when it’s too hot or windy here in Las Vegas to take Sihtric for a walk, I go straight to that stash. I’ll stuff the boxes and tubes with treats, then pile everything into a big box for him to dig through. If I’m feeling a little extra, I’ll toss in a chew and a Toppl filled with canned food.
Shredding and sniffing are his favorite things, so he really takes his time with it. I love this setup because it’s super low effort on my end, and while he’s busy with his box, I get to do my own thing. Afterward, he’s usually passed out, which tells me his needs are met!
MaryKaye and Fonzy
Senior dogs love to get down and dirty in the trash too! While my 17 year old pooch may not have the teeth and jaw strength for super thick cardboard boxes anymore, he can still shred a toilet paper roll or paper towel tube with the best of them!
I am a little more discerning about the materials I give to him so that I can help him be successful and not get overly frustrated. The things that have proven to be most successful for him include cracker boxes, brown paper delivery envelopes and the aforementioned paper toilet and paper towel tubes. He also loves treats wrapped up in “gently used” wrapping paper so we have a saved pile of used wrapping paper at the ready when he is looking for something fun to do. While senior dogs’ physical abilities may change over time, you can still meet their needs by finding the right kind of trashy treasures!
Ellen, Griffey, and Laika
I’m constantly looking for ways to use what I already have to make homemade pet toys from recyclables. It is one of the ways that I can practice some creativity and stretch my brain while taking care of my dogs. But, to be honest, when it comes to day-to-day life with my dogs, I keep it pretty simple. I stick with a couple tried-and-true options:
- I use a small, dog-accessible bin next to my desk specifically for my scrap paper. Sometimes my dogs get fed up with me doing the human work thing, and their default is to go over, pull out some paper, and give it a good ol’ shred. I always make sure there is something in there for them!
- I use scraps of old rags, shirts, socks, old stuffed toy carcasses… You know the kind, to create foraging boxes. It’s cheaper than buying all new stuffed toys, it keeps the mess better contained, and it lets my pups use their nose, rip and shred, and eat all at once.
- The good ol’ treat wrapped in paper, wrapped in a box, wrapped in paper, wrapped in a box, in a box, in a box, in a bag, stacking doll of destruction. This one is the most time and effort for me both in building and clean up, but I love watching my dogs use their muscles to get through all the layers.
Corinne and Opie
I love Opie more than anything in the whole wide world, but if I have to hear him scream at me with boredom after the kids have gone to bed I’m gonna lose my ever-loving mind. The solution for us (which also completely eradicated him chewing on our baseboards and gives us something to occupy him during kids’ bedtime) is to split his meals into shreddables (literally any thickness, he’s so talented!) and hide them around the house. We usually do 5-6, but I’m not afraid to divide it into 8-9 if I see the glimmer in his eye. Coffee cups, takeout bags, newspapers, ads, return envelopes, toilet paper tubes, paper towel tubes, children’s artwork (*gasp* I ask first…usually), anything!
Allie and Oso
There are a few ways that I incorporate recyclables into Oso’s enrichment plan. I use them to create his DIY destructible toys which primarily serve two functions:
- Fun and boredom relief
- Stress-relief (from good stress or bad stress- he chooses to shred regardless of what the big feeling is)
We also have a little bucket next to our garbage can for Oso-safe recyclables that he can pull out when he wants. It’s so cute to watch him grab one and trot away as if he found a treasure.
Taylor, Ghost, and Eden (plus Took and Lilith the cats!)
Some of our favorite trash items are Aldi boxes and paper bags, fiber egg cartons, paper towel rolls and toilet paper rolls, craft paper, extra napkins, and sometimes things like tires, unoccupied lime scooters, bricks, extra wood, etc.
For the cats, Took and Lilith love all the paper and boxes that come with grocery shopping. We change the landscape of the kitchen and office from time to time a little by experimenting with different boxes. Some they gravitate to and others get quickly moved along to the recycling.
We are building skills for our younger cat Lilith to learn to explore a little for her food, so small cardboard pieces help make up pseudo-slow feeders.
For the dogs we go a little sillier with our trash! We love cardboard and egg cartons for the fun find it games, and food puzzles too. But sometimes the “trash” gets a second life in confidence building games. Here are some examples:
- Foot targets out of wood and grip tape for our fitness practice
- Old tires or different surfaces (pre checked for any scary things) for investigating and standing on
- Crumpled up napkins for added difficulty in their “shreddables”
- Old towels for rolled up treats puzzles and find it games
- Obstacle courses made of different materials and surfaces to play with getting on and over (sometimes they even move!?)
- Surface library (different textures, angles, heights) from leftover tiles pieces, yoga mats, blankets, plastic, etc.
Tiffany Holmes and Petey
One of Petey’s favorite snacktivities (that’s an activity that includes a snack, obviously) is searching for hidden destructibles. I discuss this in detail in Indoor Adventure Time, but we also play this outside in our small back yard as well. The rules are simple: I put some food in some sort of containers that he can pull apart and destroy, I hide them, and he sniffs around to find and dissect them so he can get to his snacks.
His other favorite is having his dinner (which is kibble) out of a takeout container that has remnants of the takeout inside. Pizza boxes and the small white paper containers with flaps at the top that tuck in to close (as in Chinese takeout boxes with no metal handle) are top tier.
Trash is an important part of one of Petey’s safe spaces as well! When my mom gifted us toilet paper and paper towels from Costco, Petey benefitted not only from the cardboard tubes, but the giant boxes as well. When he needs to move away from hollering out the window, I’ll cue him to his room, chuck a handful of treats into his giant snuffle box full of packing paper, and he dives right in.
And Now for the Dramatic Conclusion
If you ever cut out and/or decorated windows and doors in a giant cardboard box and turned it into a playhouse as a kid, you’ve felt the joy of homo sapiens’ species-typical behaviors in the form of play!
So the next time you find yourself looking at a package or box and thinking “this is a good one for enrichment, I better save it,” we say: you’re welcome.
And for anyone who read this far: I DID bring home that little plastic cup with leftover peach spice schmear and give it to Petey, and he loved it.
Now What?
Did our dedication to trash spark any ideas for you? If you’re ready to begin setting up your own trashrichment, but aren’t sure how to keep all of this extra junk around, here are a couple of ideas from the team:
- Keep the biggest, nicest, thickest boxes and use them for storage
- Have an open bin with safe items for your pets to access like Emily and Ellen
- Save the big boxes for big snuffles–throw in packing paper or other paper items and throw in some treats
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Here’s to harmony (and trash) !
- Tiffany (Holmes) & the Pet Harmony Team
