Indoor Dog Enrichment Ideas: Activities You Can Do at Home

As a dog owner, preventing boredom in your dog can be challenging. But it’s essential for canine enrichment, and there are several activities that you and your dog can engage in together or set up for your dog, all of which are highly beneficial for your dog’s development and canine skills.

Today, we’ll look at the best dog enrichment ideas for home. Let’s go.

Why Indoor Dog Enrichment is Important

Benefits of Indoor Enrichment

It’s easy for our dog’s mind to become disengaged, especially when they’re not entertained or left at home for a long time. At worst, they can become unmotivated, stagnant, and, in severe situations, depressed. They may then turn their attention to chewing the wallpaper, digging in the furniture, and other unwanted or destructive behavior.

It’s your responsibility to keep your dog occupied. A bed and a basket are rarely enough. They need high-value treats to use their natural instincts at playtime, whether in the form of hide-and-seek or other activities that are good for your dog’s routine.

Mental Stimulation Activities

Snuffle Mats

Snuffle mats are great, low-cost dog enrichment activities – after all, your dog has to eat anyways. Snuffle mats tap into your dog’s foraging drive, and can reduce problem behaviors like counter-surfing.

Interactive Puzzle Toys

Dog puzzle toys are a great addition to dog enrichment. They give your pooch a pal (not that you’d trade places with them) and occupy their dog sniff instincts. There are many on offer out there, and you’ll be best off picking one that suits your dog’s individual quirks.

Hide and Seek Games

Playing hide and seek with your dog is a great way to bond and have fun. Simply get your dog to stay, then hide somewhere and call your dog! Have a few hiding spaces so your dog can use their problem-solving skills.

DIY Brain-Teasing Activities

You can create your own games with an extra difficulty level. How about stashing water bottles full of treats and putting some holes in the bottle so your dog has to roll the bottle on the ground in a particular way to get the treats out?

You can also place a bunch of toys in a box, fill certain ones with treats, and get your dog to search the busy box!

Physical Exercise Ideas

Indoor Obstacle Courses

With a cardboard box, tennis balls, toys, and other objects, you can create an indoor obstacle course to give them the physical enrichment they cannot access on walks!

Tug-of-war and Fetch Indoors

The classic tug-of-war can be done with a dog chew, their favorite toy, or other manufactured products. The same goes for fetch. We suspect that explaining how these games work would be redundant.

DIY Agility Equipment for Indoor Play

If you’re DIY-inclined, you can build your own agility course for your dog. Equally, you can purchase a kit that is suitable for dogs. Either way, an indoor obstacle course is a fun enrichment activity.

Sensory Stimulation

Scent Work and Sniffing Games

Sensory enrichment should be a part of your dog’s regular routine. If you cannot let your dog sniff around outdoors for now, you can fill a Kong toy with treats or peanut butter and hide it somewhere. Or you can do the classic guess-which-hand scent games. This turns regular treats into high-value treats.

Novel Textures and Surfaces

Our dogs are kept on their toes when they experience new textures and surfaces. Ergo, their brains are more engaged, they will burn off more energy, and sleep deeper.

Interactive Feeding and Food Puzzles

Slow Feeder Bowls

Slow feeder bowls are designed to slow your dog’s eating with their complex design. Many of them are made with a maze formation, meaning your dog has to work harder to get the food.

This rewards them and prevents them from wolfing it down (link to How to Slow Down Your Dog’s Eating) without thought, which can lead to bloating, discomfort, and even a nasty thing called gastric dilatation.

Food-Dispensing Toys

Food-dispensing toys are an excellent way to give your dogs more routine, which they need just as much as we do. Some are food puzzle toys and require your dog to move it a certain way or press a particular button to get a treat, whereas others are more state-of-the-art. Your dog adjusts to this and begins to expect the food.

DIY Enrichment Projects

Homemade Treat Dispensers

Again, you can make your own dog treat dispensers. Try cutting a slice into a tennis ball and filling it with kibble. Now, your four-legged friend must try to retrieve their food. How rewarding and a fun way to boot!

Crafty Sensory Toys

Sensory dog enrichment toys can activate scent and hearing to engage your dog. You can also purchase a snuffle mat. These are comprised of novel textures to reinvigorate your pooch’s paws, which also work as a foraging ground. Just drop the treats in and watch your dog go for it. Cute.

Final Paws

Overall, nothing can spice up your dog’s life and keep them engaged for the long term, like indoor dog enrichment activities. Dogs need outdoor adventures, absolutely, and there is no substitute for this.

But in the meantime, we need to keep enriching our dogs, whether by making the dog work with scent, new toys, or anything your creative dog owner brain can muster up!

Remember to check out other related posts to do with dog domestication, as these will help with all facets of dog parenting.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Often Should I Provide Indoor Enrichment?

You should provide indoor enrichment as often as you can – of course, there is a difference between keeping toys around that your dog loves and a game such as an obstacle course in your house. Just remember to shake things up now and again so your pup will learn new tricks and problem-solving skills as they go.

Can Enrichment Help with Behavioral Issues?

Certain forms of cognitive enrichment can help you channel your dog’s instincts in a controlled environment so both you and your dog benefit. Foraging, for instance, is an innate instinct that your dog enjoys immensely.

Products like snuffle mats and slow feeders provide your pup with a foraging ground in the house. That way, they are less likely to forage the new armchairs and couch cushions. The same is true for other behaviors.