#127 - Summer Enrichment Activities

Summer heat getting in the way of your enrichment goals? You’re not alone. In this episode of Enrichment for the Real World, Allie and Emily break down their favorite summer enrichment activities into three easy categories: indoor alternatives, water-based outdoor options, and frozen fun. Whether you have a wrestling bulldozer or a scentwork-loving rule follower, there’s something here to help your pet stay safe, stimulated, and cool as a cucumber.

From ice trifles to hallway hide-and-seek, wrestling matches to misty romps through the sprinkler, this episode is packed with realistic, creative, and customizable ideas that embrace how enrichment really works when the weather is less-than-cooperative. Plus, a few pro tips on how not to end up in the ER this summer.

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 3 Key Takeaways 

1️⃣ Indoor Swaps for Outdoor Fun – Activities like flirt pole, tug, scent work, and food puzzles can all be brought indoors with a little creativity and adaptation for your space and your dog.

2️⃣ Water is Your Summer Superpower – Whether it’s lakes, misters, sprinklers, or DIY cooling strategies, water can turn hot weather into a safe and satisfying enrichment experience.

3️⃣ Frozen Isn’t Just for Disney – Frozen enrichment, from simple broth cubes to elaborate “ice trifles,” gives pets long-lasting activities and serious cooling power.

Links & Resources from the Episode

🧾 For full episode transcripts: Arial | OpenDyslexic

🎧 Episode #111 – Scent Work for Dogs: Enrichment That Supports the Whole Household

📚 Trash to Treasure: How We Use Recycled Enrichment to Support Natural Pet Behaviors

✅ Stuffing a Pupcicle (video)

🎧 #86 – Q&A: Indoor Enrichment Activities Ideas

For the full episode show notes, including the resources mentioned in this episode, go here.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Allie: We realistically have the same like two food puzzles that we use for meals. Because I know how his body works when he uses these particular puzzles and that these puzzles are still safe for him to be using and all of that sort of stuff.

So we have less novelty in store bought food puzzles than we did when he was younger. When he was younger. I would love to to try different food puzzles and teach him how to do the things and open, open the drawers and. Push up the flappy guys and all of that. Uh, Realistically he was like, the best way to use a food puzzle is to just slam it on the ground and then all the food falls out.

And I'm like you're not wrong. That is a way to solve this puzzle, not how it was intended, but you're not wrong. So I would have to actually teach him how to use it, the quote unquote right way. Not that there is a right way, the intended way but now like you, most of our novelty comes in the trash, and part of that is just. I get bored making the same thing over and over, and so it's novelty for me to figure out new ways to make them, in addition for him to solve 'em.

Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:29] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:30] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this episode, you're going to hear Emily and I talk about three summer enrichment activity categories designed to help you survive the summer heat our EC data of the three types of play personalities, wrestling, a revelatory summer enrichment activity that no one has ever done before. Note the dripping sarcasm and how you don't have to go full Popsicle. Alright, let's get into it.

[00:02:17] Emily: I spent a total of 30 years in Austin and, and listen, I had a great time there. I loved my hometown so much and I thought I would spend the rest of my life there. I thought I was married to Austin. I, I think I've actually used that phrase before, telling people that I would never leave.

I'm married to Austin, but the heat, oh my God, I am not a hot weather person at all. And I didn't even realize how much that was true until I left Austin and moved somewhere colder. And I was like, oh, I'm really for sure, for real's, not a hot person. And when I was a vet tech, I always dreaded summer because of all the heat strokes and the burned paw pads. Every, all of the like hot weather emergencies that I knew that we were gonna have to deal with. It was just my least favorite time as a vet tech. So let's talk about how not to end up in the emergency room with your dog this summer. Sound good?

[00:03:08] Allie: I like that. I like that as, as a topic for today, just forego summer enrichment activities, and just how to not end up in the emergency room.

[00:03:19] Emily: I feel like it's a worthwhile goal. Yes.

[00:03:21] Allie: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I, we actually in college, my friend group and I had, had a rule of no emergency rooms and

[00:03:28] Emily: I feel like it's a good rule to have, like in general, like.

[00:03:31] Allie: it's a great rule.

[00:03:32] Emily: Have fun. As long as you stay out of the emergency room, everybody stays outta the emergency room and it's been a successful, successful day, right? 

[00:03:40] Allie: And it is legitimately hard. I don't live in Texas, I live in the Midwest, but y'all, the Midwest, has cold, cold winters and hot, hot summers, and there's like maybe three months out of the entire year where you're like, oh, this is pleasant to be outside. So I also understand, especially. Literally as we are recording this, there is a heat wave going.

It is oppressively hot outside. And so I feel you, it's hard. Your dog has needs and you want to take them out and do all the things, especially for me because it's quote unquote nice out. And by that I mean it's not freezing, but the heat can creep up on you. You don't realize how bad it's getting until you hit that critical tipping point and suddenly it's an emergency. But the good news is that there are a lot of summer enrichment activities that we can do with our dogs when it's hot outside. So let's get into that.

[00:04:35] Emily: So I think what we can break this up into, categories of activities because there's different ways that we can meet dogs' needs in, in extreme weather periods, hot weather, cold, like extreme cold, whatever. But, but the three for me in my head, the way, the way I'm breaking it down is like, there's three categories.

One is find a similar activity that you would be doing outside, but figure out how to do that inside. So that's one category. The the next category is. Still being outside, but getting water involved so that it, you can keep everybody cool. So even if it's, you know, in the triple digits outside, you can still stay cool if you just add water to the mix.

And then the third category is frozen things. It's, it's so much more than popsicles, but popsicles are a part of that. All right, let's start with that first bucket of, of activities. The first being. Similar activities to which you would do outdoors, but do them inside instead. And one of my favorite go-to activities is indoor flirt pole or tug.

Um, First of all, because those are both things that I actually do outside, so just bringing those inside is pretty easy. It's a pretty low effort transition. But I do change the way I play flirt pool because I do not live in a mansion or a warehouse. I have space constraints, so, um, tug, you know, requires less space, which is great if I am playing.

Flirt pole in my house because I don't live in a mansion or a warehouse. I change it up so that uh, I'll do it one of two ways. Either I'm sitting on the sofa and I will just like drag the flirt pole in front of me, like so. I'm not holding the whole flirt pole. I'm not standing upright.

I'm just using the length of the rope as the main source of activity for my dog and I'll drag it in front of me and move it, like, try to wiggle the, the rope so that the toy kind of flops around like prey. So I'll, that's one way is if I'm sitting on the sofa in the living room. However, the second way that I'll do it in the house is we have a pretty open floor plan for our main, the main floor of our house um, where there's just a wall that separates.

The kitchen from the living room, which means I can run a circle around that wall, like going through the living room and the kitchen in a circle. And I will take the flirt pole with me on in a circle like clockwise. We'll do a whole set of chase catch. Play tug, drop it, scent work, rest, and then we'll reset and do it counterclockwise so I can like run circles around my house in the other direction.

So those are the two ways that I convert flirt pole to make it realistic for the confines of my house. Ali, do you have any other ways that you play tug or flirt pole differently indoors than outdoors?

[00:07:29] Allie: I can't really. Play flirt pole indoors with oso. You've seen my house. It's very narrow. So while we have these lovely long hallways which are, is really good for like throwing treats down or doing long distance recalls, it would require very tight turns if I were to do flirt pole inside with. My size of dog and my width of space that I have.

So I realistically can't do flirt pole inside with oso. But we do a whole lot of tug inside. Y'all have heard so much about how tug is one of our primary enrichment activities for him for us. As he's gotten older, it's been primarily an indoor activity for him. Honestly, that's a lot because of our schedules and not anything that has to do with him. It's one of those where like we're watching TV and playing tug with him. So, that is an indoor activity that we do at all times.

[00:08:25] Emily: Yeah. So the, the next one is. Is either playing hide and seek where you are, the object your dog is trying to find or hiding an object and your dog has to find the object like a, a treasure hunt. So I. I don't do a lot of hiding myself in our house.

For a lot of reasons, the logistics of managing copper and Miley, the logistics of places to hide that they could find all of that is just um, it doesn't really work in this current house, but I have lived in houses in the past and I have had dogs in the past where I could hide in a closet or under a bed or something, and.

Then my friend or my partner, whoever was there, would let the dog back in from outside or let the dog out from a bedroom or something like that, and the dog would have to come find me. So that was fun. But when I'm by myself and I don't have somebody to help me with that game, I would just hide an object instead of hiding myself.

And really that's like the basis of. Anywhere but here protocol is like just start hiding things. Teach your dog how to find things that are hidden around the house. So I do a lot of that with Miley, where I'll hide stuff around the office. I have a series of photos and videos showing what, like a typical.

Day of um, anywhere but here, looks like for her. So hiding objects is good because they're moving around, they're running, they're jumping up on things, they're crawling under things, looking um, they're using their nose. When they finally find the thing, they have to use their core strength to pull it out, to open it, to pull it open, or tear it open or whatever.

So there's a lot of physical and mental. Exercise involved in treasure hunts or, or hide and seek, like whichever one. So those are options that I do quite a bit. Allie, do you have anything to add about that?

[00:10:12] Allie: I actually hide Osos food puzzle every morning for him to find. So this is another one that we do all the time. I we're just talking about all of my regular indoor activities, I guess today. So, uh, for him and now. I love what you were talking about of like crawling up on things, crawling under things, all of that. That is not a part of our strategy because I have a 90 pound dog, y'all. And that's not, that's, that's just, it's just not it. So for him he's searching only on the ground and doesn't have to crawl under anything because there's nothing he can really. Crawl under, aside from a desk in my home. But one of the things that we're starting to incorporate as we are working more on his hind end mobility is being cognizant of when he'll have to back out of an area in order to, to turn around and all of that. So we are incorporating more ways. Or more locations of hiding that require him to do a little bit of backing up, but in a way that's going to be safe for him to do so.

[00:11:19] Emily: I didn't really intentionally teach either of my dogs Barkhor. Just the process of having, playing like treasure hunts with them. They've learned Barco, like they have had to learn hind end awareness. They have gotten core strength. They have had to learn how to like balance or stabilize on multiple levels where their hind end is on a different level than their front end.

So it's been fun watching how it was like accidental Barco. And I got a lot of, unintended side benefits to my original goal benefits, which was uh, really delightful to discover. The next option is infusing your regular food puzzles with novelty. I actually don't do this a lot because I don't actually have a lot of permanent food puzzles.

Like I use a lot of trash instead of purchase toys. The way that I try to do it with my trash food puzzles is I'll introduce things into their, the, Russian nesting doll boxes or, a different type of food in the stuffed paper towel rolls or um, putting non-edible, but chewable objects in the paper, towel rolls with the snacks. So just adding things that they don't normally get in their trash so that when they get it, they're like, what's this?

And they have a moment, and I, I love to see those moments. I have a lot of fun doing is, making a food puzzle harder than it normally is by adding something that makes it a little more challenging. So, for example, if I am using a food puzzle that has like the drawers that they have to push open or move to the side, if I put a, like a frozen ball of uh, canned food or a frozen ball of some kind of snack.

In those doors, they, they don't open as easily, so the dog has to kind of lift it as far as it'll go and like lick the frozen thing down. Wear it down enough that they can open the door the rest of the way and get the rest of the frozen food ball out. That's a fun way to add a little challenge to the existing food puzzles.

So you're just making things that become, can become like routine or habit for your dog. Um, A little different and interesting and exciting. So that's a another thing that I like to do is just maybe we could call it upping the ante on their food puzzles.

[00:13:36] Allie: I don't know that I do anything different than you, honestly, because

[00:13:40] Emily: Yeah. I don't know why this is, and obviously I only have my EC data. I don't have any like real solid proof of this, but I feel like in my experience across species, there are three types of toy players. There's the rule followers who have to do it exactly as it was intended, and they will not deviate from the rules.

Breaking the rules is incorrect. And then there are the surgeons who have to go in and do it as precisely and as efficiently as possible while still causing like minimal damage or impact. Like, uh, like do you remember, um. the border, the red border Collie at the sanctuary who, like you couldn't, you'd have to let look in all the boxes to see whether or not she had actually used the food puzzle because she would close everything up after she.

Everything. So like, it was hard to tell if the food puzzle was full or empty. She's, she's a good example of a surgeon and then there's the bulldozers who are like, I'm gonna bust it up until I get what I want out of it. And they just break it. And, and I feel like there, those three categories exist across species.

I've known birds of those three categories, cats, pigs, of course. Dogs. Like, why is that? There's like, those are the three, that's the three groups of like food puzzle. Solvers and I'm here for it. I think it's delightful. I love, I love learning. Which one are you? When I meet a new animal, 

[00:15:08] Allie: I feel like humans also fall into that category of play.

[00:15:13] Emily: That's true. I think probably everybody would be shocked to learn that I'm a bulldozer.

[00:15:18] Allie: Of course you are. I'm a rule follower.

[00:15:20] Emily: Of course you are.

Yep. We can embrace our niche. It's fine. Okay, so moving on. The next thing that I do all the time, and I know Ally you do all the time too, is indoor scent work options. So, um, we've talked about this before, but when I can't do scatter feeding outside for whatever reason, I just have multiple, snuffle mats that I'll hide around or I'll do the anywhere but here protocol, which is more than just snuffle mats. We've got a lot of different types of things going on. Or I'll do actual nose work where I set up a field, I create hides and containers. I bring the dog into the room, give them the stark cue.

We do the whole thing. There's just. Lots of different ways that you can do scent work inside, but it is both physical and mental exercise and it's letting them forge and it's letting them use their nose. All the good things, all the benefits. How do you do scent work with oso?

[00:16:12] Allie: We do a lot of, like I said, we have that long hallway, so we do a lot of me standing in the living room, throwing treats down the hallway so that he has to move his little body and then go searching after he gets to the relative spot, which, it's it, I say it's a long hallway, it's not super long. I can. Toss treats to the other end.

[00:16:33] Emily: Long enough to get his body moving, which is the The goal, which is the point of it, right?

[00:16:38] Allie: And sometimes I'll incorporate some of his proprioception work into that as well, and have the cavalletti set up so that he's finding treats on either side of the caval.

[00:16:48] Emily: I love that. I also love what a good example that is of just really, really simple enrichment activities that don't take a lot of um, resources or time or skill. almost everybody is, is physically able to toss a treat down a hallway. So it's, it has broad applicability, although as always, not universal applicability.

Not everything is gonna work for everybody. Nothing's a panacea. All right, the next thing, speaking of nothing's a panacea, and, uh, you know, this is not going to be appropriate for everybody. And y'all don't, don't, don't at me. Don't at me about this. I love wrestling with the dogs who can wrestle and who enjoy wrestling.

And you know, I will say that copper at 16 is no longer a candidate for it, but in his younger years it was his favorite game. He would instigate it by um, coming up doing a play bow and then. He would do this like bend, he'd like bend his body and then jump up and like throw himself over one of my legs.

And that was his way of saying like, come on, let's wrestle. And I would grab his head and I would shake it and he would growl. And I'd be like, I'm a flippy for real. And I'd like throw him down the ground and he'd kick against me. And he like, rah, rah, rah. And, and Miley and I are are avid wrestling fans.

She asks for it, she'll come up to me. And she rears up on her hind leg legs and puts both paws straight in the air. So both of her legs are sticking straight up in the sky. And then as she's coming down, she'll kind of slap at me with her, her front paws. It's the cutest thing my whole life. If I'm not in the mood or I can't wrestle, I'll just be like, not now baby.

Um, But if I can, I'm like, oh, it's like, that is it. And then she knows it's on. And then we start wrestling and she gets really mouthy and she'll like grab my arms with her teeth. But she's very good about responding. When I'm like, oh, that pressure's too hard. She'll let up. But we we rough house. We get rough.

I'll like flip her over. Put her on the nest and she'll like have her teeth on me and she's flipping over and I'm flipping her back over. And it's pretty intense. And also it's, mutually consensual. We have stop and start cues and she's physically healthy enough to do that. She's a puppy.

She's made outta rubber. So, you know, not every dog is going to enjoy wrestling. Not every person is, or even if they do, it's not gonna be physically appropriate for every dog or person. Not every dog is going to, be able to listen to cues when, when the person is telling them their bite pressure's too hard.

And also a lot of people are gonna have less tolerance for the pressure. Like I actually enjoy when Miley like really grabs me. So I've got a few bruises on my arms, but she, but like, so my, my threshold of tolerance is higher than a lot of other people's threshold of tolerance. So it's not a game for everybody.

And I'm not telling everybody to do it. And yes, there are some animals for whom it would be incredibly dangerous. We all know friends how to do a risk assessment. But for those dogs, dog, human teams that it works for, it can be really good social interaction and sensory stimulation and physical exercise.

It's a lot of fun. I have so much fun with Miley, like twisting and turning and, wrestling. It's just, it's just fun. We, we've got our like own little miniature WWE team. It's, I don't remember what wwe, what I, can you tell I'm not into wrestling. I don't actually know WWF Federation. Federation. I think it's WWF.

I don't know. I like wrestling with dogs, but I don't know anything about human wrestling.

[00:20:21] Allie: I feel like WWE sounded more better.

[00:20:25] Emily: I don't know. You can tell that I'm, I'm not a wrestling, a human wrestling fan. Just a dog wrestling fan.

[00:20:30] Allie: Just a dog wrestling fan.

[00:20:32] Emily: Yeah.

[00:20:33] Allie: And I, like Emily said, it's dependent on the dog human team. And this can be different even within different, even with different members of your household. So Oso and Alex Love to borrow your term wrestling with each other. I. Surprise, surprise. I'm not a wrestler. I am not a bulldozer in the majority of the parts of my life. Ellen would disagree with that statement, but I, I am not a physical bulldozer. There we go. And so I don't enjoy it at all and Oso knows. This is not a game that mom is going to to play at all. Sorry, I got distracted by Zoro and I like couldn't finish a sentence. So the thing that's really interesting to me, I've talked about OSA's backstory a a little bit, but just as a reminder. He came to us with a bite history and he, he's such a jerk. I love him so much. He became staff only at the sanctuary after he tried to pull a volunteer through his doggy door, by her shoe laces. So he has been a foot biter since pretty much I met him. 11 years ago, and then developed his bite history later before I adopted him, blah, blah, blah.

It's a long story. Anywho, the point is, is that Oso had a history of using his mouth for evil. We're just gonna put it that way because if y'all have never experienced a foot biter. Huh? Being bitten on the foot hurts, regardless of how much pressure they use, it just freaking hurts. So Oso had a history of using his mouth for evil. So in addition to me not really enjoying that type of play, I also was like, no, we are learning how to use our mouth for good things instead of evil before we even attempt this, however. After several years of him not using his mouth for evil wrestling became an option again for him. And it was very cute to see Oso and my partner Alex, figuring out how to play that game together and what was okay and what wasn't okay.

And Oso tried it once with me and I was like, excuse you, what are you doing? And he was like, oh, sorry. Just kidding. Only dad does this. and Oso. Like a jerk, bullies Alex into playing with him by biting his foot. And I think it's hilarious because I can see exactly what's happening and I've told Alex, you know, this is, this is what's happening and all that.

And, and Oso has taught his dad well, that this is, this is the cue to wrestle.

[00:23:11] Emily: That is so on brand for Oso. I just, I am 0% surprised to hear that that is. That is what Oso does. And also I think it's a really good example of how like, the appropriateness of any activity can change over time, even for an individual animal. So at like Oso was not a good candidate for wrestling and then after a few years he was, and conversely.

Copper used to like wrestling was his favorite game, and now at 16, it's no longer an appropriate game for him anymore. It's not physically safe for him. If he and I wrestle the way that we used to when he was younger. it's not even, it's not just about like whether or not an individual is a good candidate.

It's about whether or not the individual is a good candidate in this moment in time, because that's going to change. So. I love, I love hearing his story and you know, we are having a thing because Miley will get copper to play by nipping the back of his elbow. And I learned last night, my family informed me last night that when they come over, Miley will start.

Trying to ask them to wrestle, not by doing her cute little rear up thing like she does with me. No, she nips. The, the backside of their armpit, which is like the most painful, annoying place to bite. Nobody had told me that she's been doing this to them. And I was like, what? She never does that to me. She has never asked to wrestle by nipping a nipping me, but especially not nipping my armpit like that.

You know that skin on the bottom part of your arm like that. And then I realized. She knows the rules with me, but everybody else, she's applying copper rules because she doesn't know that they, so now I've got this new thing that I've gotta work on is how to teach her like you don't. Nip people's armpits to get them to play wrestle with you.

Like, no, I'm the only wrestler, Miley, it's just me. So I was like, last night I learned this and I was like, why didn't y'all tell me that my dog was doing this to you? So now we've got that to work on. But that, you know, like everything is contextual, right? So like she is, she and I have a really appropriate raelin.

Kind of arrangement. And also she should not be asking other people to wrestle with her that, especially not in the way that she does it just, that's a hard no Miley.

[00:25:33] Allie: And that's a really good point. Oso doesn't ask anybody except Alex to play that game with him. He's, he has tried with my mom, and again, she's like. What are you doing? And he is like, oh, grandma doesn't do this either. So he's learned. Dad is truly the only one. He doesn't bite anybody else's feet to get him to play with him.

[00:25:54] Emily: Yeah. I think one of the reasons that people are afraid to do. Play styles like that with animals is because they're afraid if I do it with this person or if they are allowed to do it with this one person, they'll do it with everybody. And there's a kernel of truth in that concern because as we can see, Miley did not generalize our start and stop buttons.

She generalized coppers to other humans, and that's just some dog logic that I don't understand. So we do need to work on that with her. But we can work on it. We can teach dogs how to do things in context. And Oso is a really good example of what the finished product of that context teaching looks like.

And Miley's at the beginning of what that looks like. Oh, I see. That she's not only asking people other than me to wrestle, she's doing it in a very different way than she does me. And it's a totally unpleasant way, and We need to address that, right? So like that there's a reason that people have that concern, but we don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water and say that the game itself is bad.

We just have to make sure that we've got rules in place for when, where, and how to play the game in an appropriate way where everybody involved is consenting to the, to the process. All right, I'm ready to move on to category two. What about you?

All right. Category two is still outside, but get water involved to keep everybody cool. And the first one I know is gonna be revelatory. Like everybody's gonna be like, oh my God, mind blown, because nobody will ever have thought of this before. Take your dog to a body of water.

I know, I know. Shocking, right? Yeah, so, so yeah, if your dog enjoys swimming or at least waiting, you can take them to a, a lake, a creek, a river somewhere that, make sure that the water is safe to swim in because, with climate change, we've got more of these algae blooms that, you know, make water not safe sometimes, but.

One of the things that I miss the most about Austin is Barton Springs, which is a natural spring that um, they corded part of it off into a human pool. And then on the other side of the human pool, there's a dog park called Barking Springs. Which is my favorite pun of all time. And that's where we can take the dogs to go swimming.

And that is my favorite dog park in the world because when dogs are swimming around in water, they are much less conflict seeking. I have never, ever, ever, and I've, I spent a lot of time at Barking Springs when I lived in Austin with a lot of different dogs.

Like I would take my client's dogs there, and I never, ever, ever once saw any dogs have inappropriate interactions because they're in the water, they're having a lot of fun, and when it's triple digits outside, that was the safest way that I could take my client's dogs out. To have an adventure that wouldn't risk heat, stroke, or burned paw pads.

So I know that's a no-brainer. I, I know that y'all are probably listening to this being like, yes, Emily, we know, we know you can take your dog to the lake, but I have to say it because if I omitted it, people would be like, hello Lake. So there I've said it. We all, we're all on the same page now. Right.

[00:28:48] Allie: I've been to Barking Springs, and It's delightful, it's delightful. The dogs are having so much fun. Ugh, and they're all the little fishy swimming around and, yeah.

[00:28:59] Emily: Because it's a natural spring, the water is really, really cool. So it's not like hot gross water that that's festering.

[00:29:07] Allie: Yeah, so literally yesterday as of the time of recording this, so by the time you hear it, it will be not yesterday. That's how time works. Friends, Oso and I go on our adventure walks every Sunday and there are some little retention ponds. It's, it's in between festering and springs. There are lots of fishies swimming. There's lots of frogs. I have done my due diligence of things actually live in these ponds successfully and not just die. So. And not as good as as barking springs, but better than festering. So we go to, uh, to this area on our, our adventure walk that has just some retention ponds in it. And yesterday I told y'all we're in the middle of a heat wave right now, and it was.

Freaking hot. I made poor life choices by choosing to just take him in general because of how hot it was. He was fine. I was the problem. And one of the things that's really interesting is Oso is not a water dog.

I would not say that he is a dog who enjoys water. He doesn't. Swim for the purpose of swimming, for the joy of swimming. However, he does know that water cools him down. And also if you wanna chase a duck that's swimming away from you, you have to swim after it. And then he's at the end of a long line and the duck is far, far away from him not carrying a lick that he is actively trying to swim towards it.

So a body of water might be an option, even if you have a dog that you're like, Hmm, they don't love swimming. They're not really a water dog. It's really interesting to me that oso will go in the water regularly without prompting. Sometimes I have to get him out of the water, even though I would say that he's not a dog who really enjoys water, but

yesterday was so lovely. Like I said, it was freaking hot out. I thought about us having a shortened walk, but he was like, Nope, I still wanna do the whole thing. And I was like, okay, buddy. And so by the time we got to that second pond, he just. Plopped down in the water and was like, I live here now. I had sandals on, and so I put my feet in the water, sat next to him, and we had just a lovely time sitting me with my feet, him with his whole body in the water, enjoying the day together. And of course I got home and Alex was like, why do you smell like a lake? And I was like, oh. 'cause I was in the lake. It was hot. 

[00:32:01] Emily: I'm actually gonna change the order in which we're gonna talk about things because that's a really good segue into what was going to be the third. Option, the third water option, which is sprinklers and misters. And the reason that that's a good segue is because Miley hates rain. That's another way that she is very typical of kind of the, the breed standard for Biji is she's, she's hates rain.

And so we had a little bit of a challenge figuring out how to get her outside in Seattle when it's misty, which is like nine months of the year. We figured it out. But what we discovered this summer is that her doggy logic, the rules in her head is that rain is absolutely unacceptable, but sprinklers apparently are the absolute best thing of all time.

Why? I don't know. I don't know what in her head is the difference between rain and sprinklers. But we were um, when this, the weather started heating up here we started in the evenings watering our raised beds with using the sprinkler to water, the raised beds. And she. Just thinks they're the best toy ever.

So when we, when we turn on the sprinklers in the evening, we'll let her outside so she can go run through them and grab at the water and slap the water with her paws and all the things. It's the cutest thing of my whole life. Now, I also know having lived in Texas for 30 years, that um, there's a lot of water restrictions and there's rules about when to do it.

So I'm not encouraging you to break those rules. Let's be good. Members of the community and follow the rules so that everybody has access to, to water. But when you do have, if you're, if you're following the rules to so that like the community's water supply is sustainable um, you know, within that period you can offer.

Sprinkler time to your dogs or misters for dogs who don't enjoy sprinklers? I've, I've met a lot of dogs who really object to rain or sprinklers or big drops falling on them. But because mister is really fine mist um, they don't object to that. So, um, having misters on where you're playing with a dog outside can be an alternative to that.

So, um. that's something that I discovered from Miley, which really shocked me, is that rain bad sprinklers good. Um, So even if your dog doesn't like rain, I would still encourage you to try sprinklers because you just don't know what your dog's logic is. And dog doggy logic is, is fascinating to behold sometimes.

Let's be real. Human logic is fascinating to behold sometimes. Yeah, so, so try, try the the, the sprinklers or the misters within, within the confines of the community rules for water use.

Okay, so the last. Getting water involved. Thing that I would say is you can still go out within reason. If it's 122 degrees outside, I'm gonna say no to outdoor activities, just flat out. But it was often like 1 0 3, 1 0 4, 1 0 5 in Texas. That was a, a pretty common like summer day for us.

And I would still take dogs out. Also, I had a very specific way of doing that. So, this is, this is what I would do. One of the ways, one of the best ways that you can prevent heat stroke is by keeping the, the sort of hot points, the points where the veins are really shallow and, and closer to the surface of the skin.

Keeping those areas of the body wet so that your dog's body can. The water can kind of wick heat, like, the dog's body can release heat more effectively. So those points on the dog's body are their ears, like the backs of their ears, like don't spray water down into the ear canal, but behind the pena, behind the ears on the neck where like the jugular and carotid veins.

So those little troughs in the front of their neck where the veins are. What that. Their armpits, their groin, and their paws. So when I would go out with dogs, I would have two bottles of water with me. I would have the iced water for us to drink, and I would have just regular tap water. It's okay. It's actually better for the water to be room temperature to slightly warm because ice cold water on veins can cause them to constrict, which actually.

Makes it less efficient at re releasing heat. So we're, so it's actually better to have like tepid water or to slightly warm water for keep keeping their body. So I would have a squirt bottle that didn't have a really strong stream of water. A a we don't wanna blast the dogs. Um, And then I would have one of those collapsible water bowls with me that would be in my treat pouch.

And, um. I would take them out to like the green belt where there's a lot of shade and we're walking on soft ground. And before we would get out onto the asphalt, I would wet all of their, those like hot points on their body. I would wet down their paws Keeping their paws wet would protect them from the heat of the asphalt enough to get them from the car across the parking lot to the soft ground, the natural earth, grass, dirt, gravel, whatever we're walking on. So, that was how I could safely get them across very hot asphalt was by wetting down their heat points and their pads first, get them across the parking lot, get them into the shade, and then we can walk around and I would just keep an eye on them and as they would start to look like they were drying off, I would re-wet those hot points again.

And then every 15 minutes or so, we would stop. I would put some water in the collapsible bowl. I would drink some water myself, let them drink water, put the bowl away, and we would keep going. So you can still take dogs out even in like the triple digit heat. And the thing that was nice for me about that is that when I was working with clients, when I was a pet sitter and I was taking out, clients', dogs a lot a lot of people.

Don't go out in the middle of the day in the summer. Um, So the most crowded times of the day are early in the morning and late in the evening because everybody's trying to avoid the heat. So when I would take the dogs out in the middle of the day I pretty much had the green belt to myself and um, between the shade and keeping their kind of hot points wet.

There's an actual term, but I don't remember 'cause it's been 12 years since I've been a vet tech and I have a terrible memory. So there's an actual term for those points on the body, but I'm just calling them hot points. But by keeping those wet and making sure that they got water and then wetting down their paw pads before we crossed the asphalt to and from the car I was able to like take dogs out even in the heat of the summer and keep everybody.

A good, safe body temperature. And I, but I will say that like we down the paw pads buys you a few seconds. You can't just like, hang out in the parking lot. Like, um, you gotta, you gotta hustle across the asphalt. But that was how I was able to take dogs out in the middle of the day, in the summer without risking anybody's health.

And it was a really effective strategy. So I recommend that if it works for you and your dog. All right. Last but not least. Frozen things, obviously popsicles are one of those options, right?

I'm sure most of our listeners know how to make popsicles, but in case you don't or you just wanna see how we do it in the show notes, we'll include a link to our video on how I make popsicles for my dogs. So yeah, popsicles are a thing, but also you don't have to get as fancy as a whole Popsicle.

I'll just fill ice cube trays with. Different things. First of all, water. My dogs love just plain old regular ice. Ice cubes are by themselves a delight to every dog I've ever had. And then if you wanna get extra fancy or just mix it up. I'll put things like low sodium chicken broth or when I make tuna, I'll drain the tuna water into the ice tray.

The dogs have their own ice tray for obvious reasons. And again, that's gonna vary from dog to dog because nutrition like behavior is a study of one. But you don't have to go full Popsicle if you don't want to. You can just do ice cubes. And then if you want a really big, long-term project and you don't mind putting some effort into it, you can make what we call. Ice Trifles. So, You get a bucket. And you put a layer of water in and you put something in the water, either an edible something or a chewable, something, whatever you want, and then you freeze that, and then you pull it out, put another layer of water in with something else in it, freeze that.

Put another layer of water in, put something else in, freeze that until the bucket is full. So you've got layers of ice with objects in them, and even in the hottest part of summer when you give your dog an entire. bucket sized block of ice with things in it, it can still take them a very long time.

Even with the sun helping them to melt the ice, it can be a very, very long-term project of them licking and chewing to get the things out of the ice. And so it's a, it's a more labor intensive option, but it can be a really, really fun option for dogs. It's not something that I do on a regular basis, but uh, when we have really bad heat waves where we're all miserable because it's Seattle and we don't have AC because they didn't need used to need AC in this part of the country.

I'll do an ice trifle as a special treat to help get the dogs through the hottest part of the heat wave. So it's definitely not a sustainable to do every day or even every week, but I, I bust that out as a special treat when it's extra hot and the dogs just need something to do that's gonna last a long time and keep them engaged and entertained.

Do you make, do you ever make ice trifles for oso or, or did you leave that behind at the sanctuary?

[00:41:14] Allie: I don't make them for oso, realistically because I don't have the freezer space for something like that. We have a very limited amount of freezer space and it's taken up by me making. Meal prep stuff. So no, I, I haven't done ice rifles since my sheltering days.

[00:41:33] Emily: Yeah, I, I have a deep freezer. And now it's a special treat that I give to my dogs during heat waves.

All right, so to recap. There's three categories of how to survive the summer heat and enrich your dog even when it's literally boiling outside. The first category is similar activities as to what you would do outside, but do it inside. The second category is still do things outside, but just get water involved to keep everybody a safe body temperature. The third thing is frozen things. So, so yeah, that's, those are our three categories of how you can enrich your dog in the summer heat and keep everybody happy and relatively, okay. I'll just say this is how you survive the summer with your dog.

[00:42:13] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony. 

And here's a little bonus enrichment tip to thank you for listening to this episode. Emily mentioned burnt paw pads a few times in this episode to tell if asphalt is too hot for your dog's. Paw pads hold the back of your hand to the asphalt for a few seconds. If it's too hot for the back of your hand, it's too hot for their pads.