By this point in time, I imagine that many pet parents have heard the term “enrichment” being bandied about, especially if you are one of the pet parents that happen to be frequent visitors around these parts. I can offer no apologies for being as passionate about enrichment as we are here at Pet Harmony. After all, the way we define enrichment should help you to understand why. Enrichment is all about meeting ALL of an individual’s needs which is, you know, kinda important for survival and well being.
I one hundred percent acknowledge that defining things can be much easier than putting them into practice, however. Especially for busy families. Work, school, after school activities, meal prep, household tasks, paying bills and meeting kids’ enrichment needs can take a toll. I felt exhausted just writing that sentence! Y’all are responsible for so much!
It gets even more complex when we add a pet or two into the mix. How do we navigate meeting everyone’s needs when we barely have enough time to get the basics done? How do we make sure that the kids’ needs, the pets’ needs and our own needs are being met when there are still groceries to buy, dinners to prepare, homework to complete, practice to attend, and baths to give?
While I can’t help you with grocery shopping or carpool responsibilities, the purpose of this post is to help you with crafting plans that will help you help your pets. My goal is to empower you to create sustainable, safe and enriching environments that support all the members of the family including small humans and your furry four legged friends.
Let’s be strategic first.
There are plenty of ways that you can safely involve your kids with partial responsibility for meeting the needs of your pets. There are also plenty of good reasons why you might want to consider doing so. There is existing research that indicates that having and caring for pets has a positive effect on child development, including intellectual development, concentration, social interactions, and stress reduction.
Even so, it is a good idea to make sure you take your pets and your children into consideration. Factors to consider include the ages of both your pets and your children, the physical health of the pet, the sociability of your pet and the relationship your pet and child share. We should never do something just for the sake of doing it. We have to do an analysis of the benefits for the individuals involved. If you are feeling uncertain about what that looks like, working with a training and/or behavior professional can help you come up with strategies that will work for your particular situation. Overall, the goal should focus on building/strengthening bonds, fostering responsibility and empathy, while balancing the needs of your family with the needs of your pets.
Still with me?
Strategies that can work for the younger child crowd are outlined in this blog post and include Montessori-inspired ways to have your child prep food, water, food puzzles and lick mats. Older kids can have more independence in terms of helping with the day to day tasks that are required to maintain physical and emotional health in our pets. Depending on the child’s age this can include the following ideas:
- feeding
- playing tug or fetch
- playing hide and seek
- teaching new skills through training
- prepping enrichment puzzles or toys
- simple games like “find it” or “kibble fetch.”
Again, the focus here should be on fostering the relationship between child and pup so choose the activities that match the energy level of both. In order for enrichment to truly be enriching, we should not be taking a one-size-fits-all approach in any case. If you have a low key pup but a high energy kid, playing a short, active game like tug or fetch can easily be followed by having your child scatter some treats in the yard for their best friend to sniff out. Don’t be afraid to ask for your kids’ input too. They are incredibly creative problem solvers and there is likely to be higher buy-in from them if they are part of the decision making process! They might enjoy looking at this blog post about creating low cost DIY enrichment to get their creative juices flowing.
School’s almost out for summer…let’s make a plan!
While we are on the subject of kids and dogs and meeting needs, I’ve got one more suggestion to share. With summer quickly approaching and kids’ presence in the home looming large over a dog’s day, it’s important to plan for the inevitable changes in daily routines, schedules and predictability. I highly recommend getting a jump start on your planning now so that habits can be built (for pets and humans alike) before a potential conflict occurs.
As excited as I suspect most kids are at the prospect of lazier summer days, I wonder what pets would say if they had the ability to tell us what is on their minds. After all, the majority of pets spend a fairly significant portion of their days resting, relaxing, and napping off and on. With more folks present in the home during summer vacation, the environment might be less supportive of meeting a pet’s individual need for rest. It might be a surprise for some folks, but rest and relaxation fall under the very important enrichment category of calming enrichment. It’s so important that it gets its own chapter in Canine Enrichment For the Real World. Rest, relaxation and sleep are all integral for well being no matter what species we are talking about.
So, what’s the plan?
If we know that calming enrichment is significant in its importance for our pets, how can we arrange things so that it is more likely that our pets will have this need met during the hustle and bustle of summertime? Great calming enrichment activities with ways that kids can prep for them are as follows:
- Licking enrichment:
- Create dog safe recipes that the kids can spread on a licki mat or stuff into a Kong or Toppl.
- Kong has some great recipe ideas on their website as does West Paw and here is a list of dog safe foods for ideas that can be used.
- Don’t forget the kitties-they like licking activities too!
- Scent enrichment:
- Send the kids on a treasure hunt to see what smells they can dig up from inside and outside the house. Dirty socks are sure to be a hit!
- Basil or other herbs from the garden can be of interest to some pets.
- Catnip for cats can be grown in a pot and tended to by the nurturers in your family.
- Found tufts of rabbit fur can be intoxicating.
- Sea shells from the beach, or leaves, branches and dirt from a nearby forest preserve can be collected and brought back to be used on a rainy day.
- If you like listening to podcasts, here is an Enrichment for the Real World podcast episode that has other scent enrichment ideas that you and your child can implement together. Many of which are super easy!
- Chewing enrichment:
- Does your child like to engage in citizen science? If so, can the animal they observe and learn about be the pets in your house?
- If we narrow that down, can they design an “experiment” to see which chewing enrichment your pet enjoys the most? What do they hypothesize?
- How can they collect data? Once they have their observations encourage them to share their findings with the other members of the family. Perhaps a little data scientist will emerge in the future!
- Safe spaces that include the ability to rest and nap:
- Ask your child for their observations about where they see your pets resting frequently.
- Based on the information they provide, discuss the ways in which you will keep that location as “dog friendly” as possible. Ask them for ways in which they can make sure to communicate this to other household members.
- Would they like to make a sign that says “Daisy’s Sleep Zone” so that everyone knows that when Daisy is resting there, they should not be disturbed?
- If your pet’s favorite resting place is in the hub of the home, let’s say on the family room couch, ask them to help you think of alternate resting spaces that will give the pet a kid free, quieter location to rest.
- Share this Grumble and Growl Zones resource from Family Paws with them so they understand the importance of leaving the family pets alone when they are resting or enjoying a doggie snack.
Now What?
If you know me at all, you know that one of the things I say a lot is to be proactive, not reactive! Let’s start creating healthy sustainable habits now that will set everyone up for success in the future. This includes the following goals:
- Include the human kids in the household to be part of the creative, troubleshooting process. You might be surprised at the ideas they come up with. A nice side-effect is that taking a team approach typically works to create a deeper investment in the process.
- Enrichment is a wonderful way to build bonds between pets and kids. With the suggestions above, getting started should not be super labor intensive.
- Start planning for a safe space now so that when summer vacation starts, you are well prepared.
- I’ve already shared that at Pet Harmony we are passionate about creating enrichment plans that support your pets without being terribly taxing on the human. We know you are busy and that, while you love your pets, they are not your only priority. If you need help, we are here for you!
Here’s to harmony!
MaryKaye
Resources
- Yu, C. (2024) A Systematic Review of the Positive Effects Of Pets on Child Development. Communications in Humanities Research, 39, 82-87