Here at Absolute Dogs, we’re firm believers that every moment with our dogs can be an opportunity for learning, bonding, and pure fun. From training sessions to everyday interactions and even mealtimes, we know the value of creating enriching and enjoyable experiences for our canine companions.
One of the simplest and most common ways of providing enrichment for our dogs comes in the form of food and – whether you're new to dog ownership and training or you’re a seasoned pro – there is incredible power in exploring fun and creative ways to use your dog's daily food to not only grow core skills and behaviours, but to also unlock a wonderful world of mental and physical stimulation that enriches your dog’s daily life and provides a brilliant boost to your bond.
In this blog post, we're gearing up to explore practical strategies, healthy hacks and terrific top tips designed to truly transform your dog’s days with a game-changing approach to feeding your dog that turns every meal into a joyful, enriching learning experience, no matter their age, breed, training history or background.
Forget the traditional (and somewhat mundane) routine of filling a food bowl; it's time to unlock your dog's potential, strengthen your bond, and enhance their training through playful interactions and positive reinforcement. Welcome to canine enrichment revolution that we like to call Ditch the Bowl!
Ditch the Bowl to Enhance Your Dog's Diet, Training and Wellness
The concept of Ditch the Bowl isn't just a new feeding trend, and it certainly doesn’t mean throwing your dog’s bowl in the bin and simply tossing their food on the floor.
We like to think of Ditch the Bowl as a way of life that enhances and enriches every part of your dog's life, from their training and bond with you to their health, wellness and longevity. What’s not to love about that!
Ditch the Bowl to Transform Your Dog's Mealtimes Into Canine Enrichment Fun!
The traditional dog bowl may seem like the easiest way to feed your dog, but it can mean you miss out on so many amazing opportunities for daily mental stimulation and engagement for your dog.
Dogs are natural foragers, and engaging their instincts can make mealtimes so much more fulfilling for them. By ditching the bowl, you encourage your dog to use those natural instincts and really engage their mind.
By ditching the bowl and opting to feed your dog through interactive enrichment activities or by turning food into a game and a fun experience, you can provide your dog with physical exercise, mental challenges, and a whole lot of joy! This not only makes mealtime more enjoyable, but also provides a host of benefits for your dog's overall well-being too.
Now it’s time to delve into how ditching the traditional dog food bowl and embracing a little something called contrafreeloading can transform your training journey with your dog, enhance their health and wellness, and epically enrich their life!
Ditch the Bowl to Create Rewarding Canine Enrichment Experiences Using Your Dog's Contrafreeloading Instincts!
Contrafreeloading is the fancy scientific term for a characteristic that means an animal would much prefer to work for food, rather than just be handed it on a plate. In simple terms, it is the enjoyment an animal gets from interacting with and engaging with their food.
When given the opportunity to choose between food that is freely fed (i.e. poured into a bowl) or that is presented in a way that requires effort (i.e. playing games, tackling a stuffed enrichment food toy or searching for hidden food in a snuffle mat), a dog prefers the food that requires effort. Contrafreeloading is a behaviour that taps into a dog’s innate desire to forage and hunt, making mealtimes an engaging and rewarding experience.
So when we consider that dogs are by nature contrafreeloaders, the concept of ditching the bowl really just comes down to providing your dog with their preferred food experiences.
Contrafreeloading has four main benefits for dogs, where it promotes:
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Mental Stimulation: Dogs are intelligent animals that thrive on mental challenges. By working for their food, they engage their brains, which can reduce boredom and destructive behaviours.
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Physical Exercise: Incorporating movement at mealtimes can provide physical exercise, which is especially beneficial for dogs that need to lose weight or have high energy levels.
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Bonding and Trust: Engaging with your dog during mealtime through games and activities can strengthen your bond and build trust. It's a wonderful way to communicate and connect.
- Calm and Relaxation: The act of licking, chewing, sniffing and working for food is incredibly calming and provides a healthy outlet for natural behaviours. This can lead to a more relaxed and contented dog – and a dog that is easier to train, and easier to enjoy life with.
Rooted in the principle of contrafreeloading – giving your dog opportunities to enjoy their preferred food experiences – the concept of Ditch the Bowl is truly adaptable to any lifestyle, providing flexibility and creative ways to feed and train your dog.
So, whether you're working on specific training goals or focusing on enhancing your dog's overall wellness, this super strategy offers a fun, rewarding, and enriching lifestyle experience for both you and your dog!
Ditch the Bowl for Enriching and Effective Dog Training Success!
Ditching the bowl means making food a fun and interactive part of your dog's day, and although every dog is unique, Ditch the Bowl is 100% flexible to suit your lifestyle and your dog's food preferences and dietary requirements.
Whether you feed fresh, raw, kibble or speciality diets, there are creative ways to incorporate this game-changing strategy into your dog’s training and lifestyle because your dog’s food has an almost endless variety of experiences to offer:
- You can try different reward methods like tossing, bowling, or flicking food for your dog to catch or chase and watch as each piece of food becomes a “golden nugget” of reinforcement, helping your dog learn new behaviours and truly enjoy their training – and working with you!
- You can also use squeeze tubes for training dogs on fresh and raw diets, and those with special dietary needs or medication requirements.
- You can experiment with food toys, lickmats, puzzle feeders, snuffle mats and stuffed bones or dehydrated natural chews for enrichment activities that calm your dog and keep them mentally stimulated (and occupied).
By using your dog's daily food allowance for training, enrichment and rewarding good behaviours, you can enhance your relationship and build essential life skills while also gaining amazing benefits like improved recall, more calmness, loose-leash walks, decreased behaviour struggles and a more focused, optimistic, and well-behaved dog.
When it comes to getting started with Ditch the Bowl, we’ve got 5 top tips to share with you to help you achieve success!
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#1 Start Slowly: Some dogs may need time to adjust to this new way of feeding. Begin with high-value treats like cooked chicken or freeze-dried raw food and experiment with reward experiences before gradually transitioning to their regular food.
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#2 Keep an Eye on Your Dog’s Condition: Keep track of your dog's food consumption to ensure they're getting the right amount. Adjust portions based on their activity level, weight, and overall body condition.
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#3 Keep Things Consistent: Consistency is key to success. Reinforce good behaviour and play regularly to build strong habits and skills.
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#4 Make it Your Own in Multi-Dog Households: Manage a household with multiple dogs by providing individual play and rest times or using passive calming activities to keep dogs calm and occupied as you work with and spend time with them.
- #5 Make it a Fun Time, Not a Long Time: Even busy schedules can accommodate Ditch the Bowl. Use short, 2-3 minute play sessions or long-lasting enrichment activities throughout the day.
Calming Mental Stimulation Promotes Better Behaviour and a Healthy Dog
Calmness is an essential concept for a dog to learn and it’s one of the most vital skills for any dog to understand as they navigate life. If your dog is a calm dog, they are behaving appropriately and making great choices. If your dog is calm, they cannot be experiencing frustration. If your dog is calm, fear can’t overwhelm them.
The Calmness Triad provides an excellent framework through which to teach your dog calmness as you rotate through the three zones of calmness when not actively training, exercising, exploring or playing.
- Active rest is something all dogs need. Good quality rest time to sleep and empty their bucket! Use a gated community, ex-pens and crates.
- Passive calming activities such as enriching canine food puzzles, food toys, K9-Calm Mats, and scatter feeding help practice growing calmness.
- The Calmness Protocol rewards spontaneous moments of calmness and builds value into calmness when your dog actively chooses calm behaviours.
Ditching the Bowl isn’t just about hand-feeding your dog their daily rations. By ditching the bowl you can also encourage mental stimulation by providing them with food toys that can be filled or stuffed, such as snuffle mats, puzzle toys, lickmats and food toys, as well as long-lasting natural and healthy chews.
This is how you can balance rewarding them throughout the day with opportunities for relaxed calm while licking/chewing on an engaging and interactive food toy.
By incorporating these passive calming enrichment activities into your dog's daily routine, you're not just providing physical exercise but also nurturing their mental and emotional well-being. Enrichment can reduce boredom, decrease destructive behaviour, and strengthen the bond between you and your dog. It's a win-win for everyone!
Homemade Treats, Food Rewards and DIY Enrichment Activities for Your Dog
Enrichment for dogs is such a rewarding activity for a few reasons. Firstly, it gives your dog something to enjoy as a treat for their senses and natural instincts. Secondly, it can be incredibly calming for their brains.
Are you looking for more fun and cool ways to add some enrichment to your dog's daily life? Check out our list of canine enrichment favourites and get inspired!
Enrich Your Dog’s Training With Food Rewards
Games-based training is where it’s at when it comes to providing your dog enriching, positive rewards-based training experiences through food games that reinforce positive behaviour.
Not only are there literally hundreds of games to play that grow your dog’s skills and solve struggles, you can also incorporate games like "Find It" to make learning new cues and skills fun and rewarding for both you and your dog.
Bake Tasty Treats to Enrich Your Dog's Training
Now, if you’re from around these parts you might know that we like a bit of baking. In fact, we’d go as far as to say we’re a bit obsessed with preparing food for our dogs, especially when it comes to baking training treats!
Making delicious and nutritious homemade dog treats for your dog makes it even easier to ditch the bowl and provide your dog with healthy superfoods, and you can also take comfort in knowing every single ingredient that goes into your recipes!
Create Homemade Frozen Calming Enrichment Treats for Your Dog
Create frozen food treats by mixing fresh fruits and veggies, meat or kibble with water or broth and freezing them in ice cube trays or puzzle toys. These are perfect for hot days and can keep your dog entertained for hours.
Create Canine Enrichment Sensory Sniff Zones
Create enriching 'sniffari' spaces in your garden with obstacles, hidey-holes and dog-safe herbs and plants for them to sniff through and explore.
Provide Foraging Opportunities for Natural Canine Enrichment
Play the Scatterfeeding game and toss your dog's food in the grass of your garden or shaggy rugs in your home and let them sniff it out to mimic natural foraging behaviour. This encourages your dog to use their nose and problem-solving skills.
You can also play Cardboard Chaos and Noise Box style games too – simply grab boxes, noisy packaging, novel items and make a pile. Scatter in food and let your dog build their confidence as they sniff!
Play Scent and Nosework Games for Fun Canine Enrichment Activities
Scent games are fantastic for engaging your dog's most powerful sense – their nose. Hide treats around the house and/or garden and encourage your dog to find them using their powerful sense of smell.
Fun Food Strategies for a Happy, Healthy Dog
Ditching the traditional dog bowl and embracing more canine enrichment activities can transform your dog's daily routine and your life together. By providing opportunities for mental and physical exercise, you can help your dog lead a happier, healthier, and more fulfilling life.
Whether you're using daily food for training, or playing with food puzzles, scatter feeding, and DIY enrichment ideas, the key is to make mealtimes engaging and rewarding experiences for your dog. Are you ready to start this exciting adventure?
At Absolute Dogs, we're passionate about helping you create a deeper connection with your dog through games and enrichment. So why not start today? Explore the possibilities, watch your dog's excitement and joy grow and let's make every meal a moment of connection and growth!
