Playtime is Quality Time for Dogs
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Many types of enrichment can be used to enhance a dog’s quality of life: social (facilitating intra- and interspecies contact), occupational (giving the dog a job), physical (altering the quality and complexity of the dog’s living space), sensory (stimulating sight, sound or smell) and nutritional (feeding via toys such as Kongs).
Enrichment is important for canine well-being because it helps keep dogs in good physical and psychological condition. In this article, I will mainly focus on physical enrichment, particularly on providing dogs with toys, one of the most common ways people attempt to enrich a dog’s environment.
Physical enrichment should offer outlets for positive expression of natural behaviors. For example, providing a Terrier with an outdoor sandbox allows him to engage in normal digging behavior in a manner that is not destructive to property and therefore, more acceptable to his owners or caretakers.
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