#135 - Trick or Treat? When Enrichment Isn't Enriching

Sometimes enrichment doesn’t go the way we planned. Maybe the activity is too easy, too hard, too arousing, or just plain unsustainable. In this episode, Allie and Emily pull back the curtain on the common pitfalls that turn “enrichment” into air quotes enrichment (aka, not enrichment at all).

You’ll hear everything from professional confessions (yes, even experts have tantrums when their pets need more than expected) to client stories that remind us why individual needs matter more than breed stereotypes. Whether you’ve been tricked by enrichment guilt, overcomplicating your plan, or assuming “more is always better,” this episode will help you find that sweet spot where enrichment actually improves your pet’s quality of life.


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

1️⃣ Enrichment is about outcomes, not activities – If your pet’s welfare isn’t improving, it’s not enrichment (no matter how fancy the toy).

2️⃣ Find the Goldilocks zone – Too much, too little, too easy, or too hard all miss the mark. Matching challenge to skill level is key.

3️⃣ Sustainability matters – Enrichment should work for you too. Simple, DIY solutions often win over complicated, costly ones.

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

Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: So I think that's something to remember is that the whole point of, of these exercises as skill acquisition, well not the entire point, there are other benefits, but we have to think of these exercises in terms of skill acquisition, which means we need to be paying attention to making sure that the challenge matches the, the skill level that the learner is currently at.

So you have to think of it like grade school. Like my dog is in fifth grade now. I need to start giving my dog fifth grade challenges, not kindergarten challenges. We're way past kindergarten at this point. 

[00:00:35] Allie: 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...

[00:00:53] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:54] 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 why is Emily, why I had an absolute temper tantrum not related to why is Emily, my proud mom moment, emily's cringey moment, and also Emily's commercial for Ted Lasso. Alright, let's get into it

So we often get asked about what to do when enrichment is too. Like fill in the blank here too. Arousing, too easy, too expensive, too labor intensive, just too much of something. And the answer is usually, well then it isn't enrichment. It was an attempt at enrichment, but by definition, enrichment didn't happen because enrichment is about outcomes.

Just like when someone says, I tried positive reinforcement, but it didn't work, if the behavior you were trying to increase didn't increase, then by definition positive reinforcement didn't happen. We had an entire, not only one episode, we had two whole episodes about that y'all will to that in the show notes.

And that's because the operant consequences are descriptions of outcomes and not processes. And likewise, enrichment is a description of outcomes, not processes. You can give an animal in. Enrichment. I'm using air quotes, but this is a podcast so you can't see it. Enrichment, air quotes, toy. You can offer them an enrichment, air quotes activity.

You can implement an enrichment, air quotes plan, but if needs weren't met, goals weren't met, and the overall outcome was not an improvement in welfare and wellbeing, then by definition it wasn't enrichment.

[00:02:59] Emily: And this can be very tricky. Sometimes when we're trying to treat our animals, we end up tricking ourselves. Trick or treat? Get it. Bum. Bum. Thank you. I'll be here all week.

[00:03:13] Allie: I hate you.

[00:03:14] Emily: Listen, it's October. I gotta make a trick or treat. Joke. Them's the rules. It improves my wellbeing. Okay.

[00:03:21] Allie: It does not improve my wellbeing. I, well, you know what? There's so much joy on your face right now. I guess it does improve my wellbeing.

[00:03:31] Emily: You laughed and laughter is good for your welfare and wellbeing, so I'm gonna say it's also good for yours even if you think you hate it. The, the data I'm observing right now contradicts what you think is happening.

[00:03:46] Allie: I like how your whole thing is, only the learner gets to decide what's reinforcing, and you're like, no, no, no, no. That was reinforcing for you. Just, just trust me. It was.

[00:03:57] Emily: Yep, yep. I said what I said.

[00:04:01] Allie: Sorry, not sorry. All right. Anyhow, so let's talk about times when enrichment isn't enriching enrichment. Air quotes, I should say, isn't enriching and what to do about it. Take it away, Emily.

[00:04:19] Emily: All right, so first of all it's not enough. Even though maybe we think we did a lot of it. Sometimes it's not enough to completely meet the need, completely improve their welfare or wellbeing, and in that case you gotta do more of it or add additional things that. Can continue to improve. So an example of that is I have Kaya, I don't talk about her very much and I think maybe just because we're so focused on dogs and also we've been together for 17 years and at this point we're just an old married couple.

But Kaya May Aus Parrot, she, now that she's alone because Bayou passed last year. I've noticed that she doesn't use her enrichment toys enough. And so at first I was like, well, let me take out the enrichment toys, like she does use them, but it just takes her a long time to use them. And she maybe spends time more time in her nest box than now, like, doing things.

And so at first I thought, well, I just need to take some away and she doesn't need as many 'cause she's a solo bird now. And then she just stopped using them altogether. So I was like, okay, well let me try the opposite of that and just packing the bird room. So everywhere she goes, there's something for her to do.

And lo and behold, that was the thing to get her foraging more. She was already foraging a little bit. She wasn't doing it as much as I would like to see or as much as her, the species activity budget tells me that she probably should, or her past learning history tells me that she probably should. So I packed more in, and for some reason that worked for her.

She st she comes out of her nest box a lot more now. She engages with foraging opportunities much more to the point that most of her calories now come from foraging. And I just, I give her the fresh food to make sure that she gets it. But she's going through much more of her foraged food now than she had been before.

So for her, the answer was. More opportunities just pack the room with opportunities. And then she's like, oh, okay. There's stuff to do here. There's stuff to do here. There's stuff to do here. So that's like an example of how she was doing it, but she wasn't doing it enough to make the impact I was looking for.

I guess I should also talk about what the impact was that I was looking for. I noticed that she started laying eggs way more frequently than she should. So her whole life, she had been on a very species typical routine of laying eggs twice a year. And then after Bayou died, she started laying eggs every three months or so, which meant that she was always in some nesting type of phase.

And I was like, this isn't good for her. This isn't good for her body, it's not good for her behavioral diversity. It's just not good for her. Physical health, behavioral health or emotional health, it's not good for her to be spending this much time in her nest box on eggs.

So my goal for the foraging was to get her out more doing more things and nesting less. And what it took was just packing the room to get her to do that enough to forage enough to lose the obsession with nesting and laying eggs. And so we were able, I've been able to track and now she's going through a nesting period again, but the last one that happened was in April.

So now we've increased that gap to four months, which is progress because it was like every two to three months, and now we're doing every four months. So I am seeing an improvement in her physical, behavioral, and emotional health by adding more of what she already had.

[00:08:07] Allie: FYI, for those of you who are like that math. Math, we are recording this in August, so. It takes a couple months for production.

[00:08:15] Emily: It does. Let's just be honest. We gotta, we gotta batch create these podcast episodes so we can do the rest of our business, because this is not our only job. You just outed me because earlier I said it was October. Ugh. 

It's fine. No, I believe in honesty and transparency. It's fine. We, we caught me. It's fine. Hopefully, hopefully people will think of this as like a peek behind the curtains rather than I just straight lied to them. Let's, let's hope that that's how they take it. Please take it that way y'all.

[00:08:48] Allie: I don't think anybody was thinking that until you put the thought in their heads. Any who? I had to ouch you for the math, not math thing, but I, I talk about winter oso. I've talked about winter oso so many times on this podcast that I, I won't go much into that story, but that was another situation or example where it wasn't enough. And y'all, I, I, like I said, I've talked about that story a lot, so I won't necessarily talk about like how I salted and all of that.

What I will talk about is the absolute temper tantrum that I threw by realizing that I wasn't doing enough, and that was because I so many reasons, so many reasons. One. At that time pet Harmony was new. I was planning my wedding. Were we looking for houses at the same time? I don't know. I was dealing with figuring out like a fairly new chronic illness diagnosis.

Like I was so exhausted to my very core, I had zero bandwidth. And then here was my dog, who I do a lot of stuff with. And his behavior was like, I need more than what you're doing. And I was like, I can't handle that. So I threw an absolute temper tantrum that his behavior was saying that I wasn't doing enough with him.

I obviously got over that and then put my behavior consulting cap on and figured it out and blah, blah, blah. But I just wanted to acknowledge and, to make normal, what's the word? Normalize. To make normal. Thank you. But I just wanted to acknowledge and normalize that, especially for this one, you might have feelings about it because you're like, I have a life outside of my pet. I already do a bunch of stuff with my pet. What do you mean I'm not doing enough? I've been there. I get it. Your feelings are valid and also you'll need to work through your feelings to get to the other side and be able to do what you need to for your pet.

[00:11:06] Emily: For sure. I will just add that for me, every time I realize that I'm not adequately enriching one of my animals. The other fear that I have is like a professional fear. Like I'm supposed to know this, oh God, I wrote a book about enrichment and I can't figure out how to enrich this animal. Am I a charlatan? So professional fear is a thing too. And also. We can know things and that doesn't make life easier or behavior less complex. We are sharing our lives with sentient beings and they're complicated. And so it, it's a process for everybody, whether or not you're a professional in this field. Right. All right, so the next one is the kind of opposite is that it's too much, it's too much of something.

And I, I think probably everybody's probably figured out by now that the answer to that is to do less or remove something else. Right. And this was a thing that we had some pushback on when we were first writing our book of people were having feelings about the idea of enrichment. Sometimes meaning taking things away or removing things from their environment.

And people are like, no, but rich in enrichment. Like a adding, adding, right. And I'm, but, but sometimes not, but sometimes not. Right. Sometimes it does mean taking things away. My favorite example of this I've talked about on the podcast before, but I'm gonna say it again here because it was such a beautiful example, was some clients of mine who adopted a malamute and they wanted to am malamute because they themselves were like huge trail runners.

It was like their part-time job. They did it four hours a day after work. It was their entire hobby. And they got this malamute and they were at taking him out on the trails, running him four hours a day because that's what sledding dogs do, right? They run, they got a, a sledding dog so that they could have a running partner and then.

He became really cranky and reactive and snaring at other dogs. And they were really confused and upset by this because when they adopted him they, he had no reported behavior issues. He lived in a house with multiple other sledding dogs and got along with them all famously, and he was just like a giant lovable teddy bear.

And they were like, why is he having all these behavior issues now in our home? We are meeting all of his needs. And I was like, have you asked him if he wants to run four hours a day? Like, what if he doesn't? What if that's too much? Malamutes are big dogs. They're heavy dogs. They, that's a lot of pressure on their joints.

He may not wanna run four hours a day. And at first they had big feelings about that and they were like, no, he's a sled dog. He should do this. Like he, he wants to do this. And they, politely showed me the door. And then worked with some other trainers and then came back to me and they were like, okay, so what was that again about running him less?

And I was like, let's try leaving him at home and go trail running without him and see how that changes his behavior. And sure enough, no training required. We just stopped forcing him to run four hours a day. And he went back to being the lovable teddy bear who wasn't cranky and got along famously with everybody.

And so I just, I love that example. And that, by the way, that doesn't mean that they didn't give him any exercise. It meant that he went on 30 minute walks in the morning before work, and then when they got home, they would put out some like foraging puzzles for him around the house. So while they were out on their trail runs.

He could have something else to do, but it was a lot less intensive than running for four hours a day. So it's not that we completely got rid of physical exercise, it's that we reduced it to something that actually worked for him and actually did improve his welfare and wellbeing. So that is a really good example of how sometimes enrichment can mean doing less of something.

And I think that's true for arousal too. If something is causing too much arousal and the dog can't complete their stress response cycle, they might just need less of it. It doesn't necessarily mean that you need to quit it altogether. Like I know a lot of people who do lure, coursing with a certain breed that I am very fond of, and the dogs are, are jacked up all the time.

And when they do it less frequently, they don't stop it, but they do it less frequently. The dogs can complete their stress response cycle. They can rest, they can do other things. So that also applies to arousal. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to completely quit it, but maybe just dialing it back a little bit is the, is the best thing for that kiddo.

[00:16:06] Allie: Yeah, I think a lot of times when I see this, I see it for two different reasons. One is we've talked about this, I think on the podcast there might be a full blown. Episode, but I mostly just remember the blog post that I wrote many, many years ago about enrichment guilt. So we'll link to at least the blog post.

If there's a podcast episode that I'm just forgetting about, which I think is true, we'll link to that in the show notes too. It might be a two for one. I don't know. 

[00:16:37] Emily: And if we haven't done an episode on enrichment guilt, we need to get on that fast because how have we been doing this for three years and don't have an episode about enrichment guilt? So, we'll, we'll get to the bottom of that.

[00:16:48] Allie: right. Yes, we, we, we'll, we'll rectify whatever it is that is, is happening here. But anyhow, I think. One of the first reasons I see this is because people experience what I'm terming, enrichment guilt, where you see all the like beautiful Instagram video sort of things. I clearly am not on Instagram.

I don't even know what to, to call things. I'm just gonna be vague because I'm ignorant. So you see all like the, the things that people are doing and you feel like you're not doing enough for your animal. And so I've seen a lot of people who get this, like they feel like they have to keep up with the Joneses when it comes to enrichment and novelty and doing new things.

Which again, enrichment and novelty are not synonymous. But that's a story for another time. So I think that's one of the reasons that I see people doing too much. But the other time that I see it is similar to, to what you were saying in your story. I very frequently see it more so with people who have a working breed.

When I think through my clients of like, okay, who are the people that I had to had to coach through, like, you can do less. It doesn't have to be this way. I would say the majority of them had working breeds, especially herding breeds. I remember one client in particular that had a border collie and like, yes, border collies need a lot and also rest and relaxation and not being stimulated 24 7.

That leads to things like reactivity friends. So I think that that happens quite a bit too, of, of, we make assumptions because of a, a breed's history. Whether or not the individual animal we have actually has a working lineage that is super, super important to, to keep in mind of like, is, is was this particular animal bred for working or not?

'Cause y'all, I can tell you a working lab from a show lab like a mile away, they are so incredibly different. But I'm getting off track. I think that's, we, we make a lot of assumptions based on breed and that that gets us into trouble. That was the moral of my story.

[00:19:24] Emily: hard agree. As I mean I'm, this is like one of my pet peeves is making decisions about an animal based on their breed based rather than who they are as an individual and what they're actually telling us. And also, I'm just gonna add to what you said. Sometimes even when you do have a.

Working Lion Dog. They didn't get the memo like this vet tech that I worked with 20 years ago, which that I just, I just attacked myself. But she, she got a working line Border Collie because she wanted to learn how to do like herding beha like trials and that dog, because the I can't remember the border Collie's name 'cause again, 20 years ago, but they were with her since she was a puppy, she brought the dog to work with her.

She took the dog everywhere with her. And because the dog was just her ride or die even though this was a working line, border Collie, the most chill, relaxed, easygoing dog, because they had a very enriching routine. That didn't require them to do a lot of hurting. They didn't actually have to do a lot.

She did obviously exer, she went running with this dog. She, ironically, she got the dog because she wanted to do trials. And then when she realized that the closest place to do that was an hour away, she was like, nevermind, I'm not interested. But she didn't need to because her dog's needs were met by just like living with her and, and participating in her lifestyle.

And that was a working line, border Collie. So not even, you can't, like, yes, it is more likely that you're going to get a predictable pattern of behaviors based on lineage. And even still we have to take the individual into account. So yeah. Thank you for coming to our TED Talk. We'll move on. Alright. The next thing is, it's too easy.

So sometimes I, I would say not sometimes. This is probably in my experience, the most common pitfall maybe, but I am also just making that up. I'm pulling that out of thin air. So take that with a grain of salt. But I see a lot of people who are, like I, all of my dog's meals come out of food puzzles. He, they do foraging multiple times a day and they're still climbing the walls.

And I'm like, cool, let's look at your dog doing the food puzzle. And the dog just like FFFF, F, like is so proficient at this toy that they don't even have to think about it anymore. They can just do it. Or people are like, I do find it on walks with my dog all the time and my dog is still amped up. And we look at it and it's like, well, you're still, you're stuck at the two to four pieces phase and your dog has been doing two to four pieces for their entire life, right?

So it's no longer enrichment because at this point it's become a mindless task for them. It's so easy for them. It's muscle memory. They don't have to think about it. They're not engaging, they're not problem solving. It's not really serving its intended purpose because they, their skill level is way higher than the challenge that we're presenting to them.

So, the answer to that is increase the challenge. And I can't tell you how many clients that I've had who've had that struggle, and then I'm like, I think your dog is ready for a full scatter feed. So how about you take that cup of kibble that you've been putting in the same food puzzles for four years?

And you scatter that across your entire backyard. And let's see what that does for your dog. And their dog is exhausted because it is a, it's a genuine challenge for them. The dog has to use their nose. They're moving around. They have to think. And it takes them a long time of using their nose and their brain to find all of their food.

Right. And suddenly, once again, foraging is serving its purpose. It's meeting the goals. Right. So I think that's something to remember is that the whole point of, of these exercises as skill acquisition, well not the entire point, there are other benefits, but we have to think of these exercises in terms of skill acquisition, which means we need to be paying attention to making sure that the challenge matches the, the skill level that the learner is currently at.

So you have to think of it like grade school. Like my dog is in fifth grade now. I need to start giving my dog fifth grade challenges, not kindergarten challenges. We're way past kindergarten at this point. Right. So that's, that's another, I think, again, I'm going to assert, even though I have no proof, no evidence, I think my data tells me that this is the most common one.

What do you think Allie?

[00:24:12] Allie: Yeah, I think it is one of the most common ones. And we'll talk about the, the flip side of this being too hard, but I, I think both of them. Not having the appropriate difficulty level for the current skillset of the animal is the most common issue. I see. I think I put enough qualifiers in there to make that an accurate statement with my Ann data.

[00:24:38] Emily: I agree with your qualifiers. I think you're right. It's the pairing of the too easy and too hard. Yes, excellently articulated, carry on.

[00:24:46] Allie: Thank you.

And I think one of the reasons that we see really frequently for this is it can be hard to assess an animal's skill level when you are living with their skill acquisition every single day. And I'm actually going to use a, a not really enrichment example for this because that's what's coming to my brain.

I see this so, so much when I'm working with kiddos, with maladaptive behaviors, and because I come in, every few weeks I get to see like, okay, we were here, we were yelling at dogs from across the street 50 feet away, and now we're here where we're, they can just be across the street and we're totally fine.

And, and just doing our thing and, and, but the people, the humans in that situation haven't necessarily like caught up to this is where my animal currently is. And so at some point in time with almost every single client case, I've worked, not all of them, but almost all of 'em, I would say that the human becomes the individual that is working at a slower speed and, and is the individual that we have to slow down for.

I, I tell my clients with every case, we will work at the speed of the least comfortable individual, no matter the species. And at some point in time that becomes the human, because the human does not trust the skill acquisition that their pet. Now has, and it's because they've seen the little, little tiny micro improvements.

And I come in and I see the big changes because I'm seeing it every week. And so I think that's, that is a really common thing just in general when it comes to behavior. When you live with something and it has just like little tiny improvements or deteriorations, like it goes both ways. It's really hard to see who an animal is right now and the skills that they have right now.

You, you get all that past learning history coming up and, and clouding your view. And that's true for me too. There was an experience that we had last year, two years ago. Last year. Last year it was my dad's 70th birthday and his partner threw like a, a little birthday party for him and we decided to bring Oso and knowing that there would be multiple people and y'all, I've men, I've mentioned Osos history, like he has a bite history.

He was a stranger danger kid, like all of this. And Oso just completely crushed it. One he found this lovely older gentleman that he was like, this is now my best friend, which is like classic Oso. He loves men. And so he was like, this guy, this guy is my new best friend. And we were like, cool. Hang out with Paul.

Paul loved it. And, and, oSA was doing great. What I didn't know was that the neighbors were maybe going to stop by later. And so there were going to be even more humans than the ones that I had like mentally checked off like, okay, OSA will be okay with this amount of humans. Only to that he didn't know.

In addition to, my, my family that he did know I didn't know about the neighbors and so I was worried, but aside from one person that he was like, I need to jump up to sniff your head, and it's like, buddy, you don't have the back legs to jump up on a tile floor anymore. And so she, bent over to, to let him sniff her head he did beautifully.

And the thing that was like the most proud mama moment. Was when he took himself upstairs, he was like, I need to not be here for a moment. I did not teach him that. It was at my dad's house, like he's been there. And also, like, I've done zero training sessions in my dad's house. And also is like, I just need a moment to myself.

And he took himself upstairs and just hung out by himself. And then when he was ready to come back down, he came back down and, and hung out with everybody. And that was a moment where I was like, oh man, I did not give him as much credit for how much he's improved and how much he's internalized his skills.

And he can generalize his skills to different places outside of my house. Like it was, it was super cool to see. Yeah, so it's, it's, we also do it. Professionals.

[00:29:40] Emily: Yeah, I, I love all of that. The only thing I'm going to argue is that at the beginning of that, you said it wasn't, you were gonna use a knot enrichment example, and I disagree. I think all of that is enrichment because when you're teaching animals how to successfully navigate going out on their walks or going to somebody else's house and they're learning how to handle that, it is enrichment because it.

Improves their welfare and wellbeing. So I think you did use perfectly beautiful enrichment examples.

[00:30:13] Allie: I will accept that because everything is enrichment. I didn't use classically enrichment 

[00:30:21] Emily: Your examples didn't include enrichment activities,

but the, it was that high skill, high challenge pairing that the research talks about. It was improving welfare and wellbeing. It was providing more agency for the learners, both oso and the reactive dog you were talking about earlier. It checks all the boxes of enrichment.

So, yeah. Excellent. All right. So we, we've referenced it and here we are at, it's too hard. So the opposite thing happens a lot. We're like, oh, I tried scatter feeding and my dog didn't do it. Or I try, I, I bought these expensive food puzzles and my dog doesn't use them, or I. I tried to take my dog on to do like leash reactivity training and my dog lost his marbles, right?

So like a lot of times people will attempt enrichment at a challenge that is much higher than the dog's current skill level. So we don't have that, that challenge skill pairing that we're looking for. And a lot of times people think, well, my dog just doesn't like this toy, or My dog is just naturally reactive or positive reinforcement doesn't work for my dog.

So this is a dog who needs punishment or correction. And instead of holding those beliefs it we're more effective and more, I would say compassionate when we look at it like where is the skill and what is the challenge that I offered them and how can I reduce the challenge to meet the learner's current skillset?

So a lot of times when I'm working with clients and they're saying that something doesn't work, I will observe the animal with the thing what, in whatever context we're talking about. Unless it's unsafe, right? If, if we've got a dog who's biting, I'm not gonna be like, let's watch this dog bite and see where the problem is.

Obviously we're safety is number one, right? But I'll observe a dog trying to play with a foraging toy, or not even trying because they already know it's so hard. But I wanna see how they, they interact with it or don't interact with it. I wanna see what avoidance signals I can see so that I can figure out where we need to start in terms of problem solving.

Like what is the thing that is too challenging and what can we tweak to make it less challenging? So for example one of my clients had that forging toy that's like a jug with a rope in it. And the dog didn't yet understand that he had to push the rope in for the food to come out. He was trying to pull on the rope.

So I said, okay, let's remove the rope entirely. Let's just get some scissors, cut the rope out altogether and just get the dog familiar with how to. Get the food out of the narrow entryway. So we started with that and I said, we're gonna help because this dog already has a punishing history with this toy.

So we're gonna start helping by, I'm gonna spin the bottle, like we'll make the, we'll make the like, we'll actually feel that pretty full with this food so that it doesn't take much to get food to come out. I'm gonna spin the bottle a little bit and food's gonna spill out. And then the dog ran over and it was like food, mom, mom.

And by like trying to get at the food near the entrance of the bottle, he pushed it with his nose and that made for more food come out. And he was like, oh, this is how you do it. You've gotta knock it around. So he started pushing it with his nose and hitting it with his paws and food came out and it was pretty easy.

So once we had built that layer of like a reinforcement history with a very easy version of that toy, I said, okay, now let's get. A much narrower rope and just put a few knots in so that it's it can't, we can't pull it back out, but we can it's much easier for him to push it in far enough to get food out because the rope is very narrow.

So as soon as he just gets the knot out of the, the, the way food will come out. So we practiced that. He got really good at that, and then I asked them to just buy the full blown version of that toy again with the full, big thick knot because honestly, I don't know what sorcery they use to get the big thick knot into the bottle.

They probably do some kind of fancy squishing it with some kind of. Feeding it through a tube. I don't know. It's not my job to know that. I don't need to know that. So I haven't put any effort into figuring it out. But so then we bought like, the real version of the toy and then he was able to do it because we had to scaffold those skills for him to become proficient enough to actually use the toy in its full blown glory.

Right? So, that was an example of how we got a dog, who the, the client thought, my dog just doesn't like this, this food puzzle. And we realized, no, the dog just doesn't know how to use it. So we made it easier and then made it more difficult through approximations.

[00:35:34] Allie: I am gonna come back with a not enrichment activity example.

Thank you. I don't, I don't know why like reactive dogs are like so on my mind today. I, there is no reason other than, I don't know, I love working with 'em.

[00:35:52] Emily: I was gonna say that we work with them all the time. That's probably why they're on the brain. our bread and butter.

[00:35:59] Allie: I, yeah, I, I guess so. I don't know. But I, I see this so, so frequently when it comes to working with maladaptive behaviors of, it's just too hard. We haven't split the steps down enough, practice the steps in easier situations enough in order to handle a more difficult situation. And there is a client who, I haven't thought about these clients in years, but but this situation absolutely was, it was the epitome of, it's too hard.

We need to make it easy. I had these clients who their dog was reactive on walks. He also. Was one of those kiddos that like as soon as you open the door to the backyard, they had a fenced in backyard, but he came out like guns a blazing best defense is a good offense. And so he would, he would shoot out the door yelling at nothing, just just yelling.

And and so we worked on, on the backyard stuff first, and then the client said, okay, we're ready to work on walks. And I was like no we're not. And for various, various reasons I said, okay, you know what you need to see for yourself that your dog is not ready. It's, it's still safe. It's not going to really set us back.

I, I went through the pros and cons of, of taking this angle, but I said, okay, you need to see for yourself that your dog is not ready. And so I went on a walk with them and I told them, I was like, sure, here's what you can do. It's not gonna work, but maybe your dog's gonna prove me wrong.

Sometimes that happens. Like, and if so, awesome. And and so I went on a walk with them. They tried the things, it didn't work, and we went back to, to their house and they were like, okay, so what were you saying about practicing before the test? And I was like, ah, yes, now we're ready to do the thing. And it just, it was so delightful because I, humans are so fun.

Like I love. Watching them learn. And sometimes we just need to do a thing knowing it's not gonna work to make sure that that's true before we can move on and, and do the thing. I do that too frequently I will literally tell my, my business partners and mentors when I'm doing that, where I'm like, I know you're right.

And also I need to just do it and see that I'm wrong before I can do the thing that you're asking me to do. But yeah, I, I think so frequently people want to, especially with maladaptive behaviors test. To see if it works and it's like, oh, we did not do nearly enough practice for, for this to work.

And I use the analogy of you have to, you have to do like the coursework or the classwork or you have to practice before you can have the test. If you just go straight into like taking a test and there's no practice or studying or before that, it's not going to work. So that's my not enrichment activity example that I very frequently see.

I see. I like either end of the spectrum of like, we're either scared to put our, sit our dogs into a situation that they have the skillset because we don't trust the skillset yet, or we're overconfident in the skillset and throw them into the situation too early. 

Okay. 

[00:39:49] Emily: Yeah. Yeah, I, I see that a lot too. My go-to analogy is we don't teach a pilot how to fly a 7 47 full of passengers. We start with like. The theory of flying and then flight simulation. And then you have an instructor flying a little plane with you and then you get to do solo flights and then you eventually work your way up to the 7 47 full of passengers.

But that's not where we're gonna teach you, 'cause things could go real bad for a lot of people. And that's true for dogs with unsafe behaviors as well, right? It, it can go real bad for a lot of people if we try to just throw them in the deep end. Alright, so next is it's too arousing. And the answer to that is not an answer, it's a question.

But why though? Why is it too arousing? Let's figure that out first before we figure out what we need to change about the situation. So what are the unmet needs? What's happening here? Is this a dog who does not know how to complete their stress response cycle?

Is this a dog who doesn't know that escape is an option? Is this a dog who is actually anxious about something? So there's like anxiety mixed with fun and maybe this is not the best we need to address The anxiety component of this. Is this a dog who has a TBI or is an adolescent or in some way legitimately struggles with impulse control because of their brain?

We need to know why it's too arousing for the dog before we troubleshoot that. And what I see a lot, a lot, most often, in fact, it's the reason that we split out calming in the categories of enrichment is that dogs just have not learned how to self-regulate. They have not learned how to complete their stress response cycle.

They have not learned how to move away. When stressors get too intense. They have not learned how to take those mini breaks to prevent them from that level of escalation. And I'm, I'm going to go back to that breed conversation that we had earlier. I see a lot of times people not working on it because of the breed.

They think, well, I have a Malinois, so they're just drivey dogs, so this is just how they are and no friends. That's just not true. It doesn't matter what species. I'm not not even talking about breed. It doesn't matter what species it is. Physiology is physiology. It's not okay for any. Sentient being to be in a constant chronic state of elevated stress.

That is not a breed trait. That is us failing our learners. And yes, I, I went there, I said failing. It's not, I'm not blaming individual people. I'm saying as an industry, we need to stop saying that because we are not meeting the needs of the learners in our care when we let those beliefs drive our decision making processes.

So, yes, I chose violence. I'm not sorry. I do not apologize. It doesn't matter what breed they are. It doesn't matter how quote unquote drive you. They are. Every individual should know how to complete their re stress response cycle. Now, here's where it does get legitimately tricky, and here's why. I think a lot of those working breeds get unfairly.

Their, their, their ability to rest gets unfairly neglected. What is true is that there are, are some activities that by definition require high arousal, right? Like lure, coursing is a really good example of that. By definition, you should be all jacked up on Mountain Dew if you're gonna do lower coursing.

I'm not claiming that animals should never experience these high intensity eustress activities. That's not what I'm saying. Moments of high, high intensity eustress can be great, can be delightful. They can be really helpful in, in the dog's overall welfare and wellbeing. The difference is that when that activity is done, they need to know how to complete their stress response cycle.

So I'm gonna go on a limb and say that's the most common reason. An activity is too arousing. It has nothing to do with the activity itself. It means that we need to add other skills in to teach an animal how to come back down. But, ooh, one of the things I forgot to investigate is like, also one of the things we need to investigate is, is this a neurochemical imbalance issue?

Because I experienced this myself until I got on the right medications, I really struggled with self-regulation because my, my neurochemistry was all outta whack. So that could be another thing to investigate. In addition to like not, not knowing how to complete their stress response cycle, not knowing how to move away from distress, like intense stressors, not, I can't remember. Oh, yeah. Traumatic brain, gender and adolescents or traumatic brain injury, like legitimate impulse control. All of those things. Another thing can be neurochemistry, which is, which is, I, I think we have a skewed perception of it because this is our entire client base is, like we intentionally work with animals who really struggle with severe, complex maladaptive behaviors, and so a lot of those kiddos have neurochemical imbalances.

But with my, through my lens, my selection bias, it feels to me like that's the second most common cause is the neurochemistry stuff.

[00:45:31] Allie: I would add pain and body discomfort in with that as well. And I know for me as a human, I, I struggle with chronic inflammation, with pain, all of those things. And I know that if I have several pain days in a row, like if anybody is making a noise that is even remotely annoying, I will bite your head off.

And it's because I just can't handle that amount of stimulation in addition to the amount of stimulation that my body is, is. Putting out itself. And we see that with a lot, a lot, a lot of kiddos that we work with where there's an underlying pain or gi or skin issue. And that is, is exacerbating how arousing a particular environment is.

[00:46:27] Emily: I just got wide-eyed because I cannot believe I forgot to include that on the list because we both know that I am. Poster child for arousal as a pain response. And in fact, I mean in, in addition to the fact that I pro bono myself into poverty for most of my adult life, the other reason that I intentionally avoided going to conferences, even when I had the money to go, is because of my chronic health issues.

When I am in a lot of pain and I'm also around people, my. Response to that. And it is not, it's, it's not an, a conscious response. Like it just happens is I get, I feel manic. Like I, it's like, oh, I'm in a lot of pain, but I have to be around people. Ha ha ha, everything's great. This is great. Y'all were having fun.

And I was so embarrassed by my behavior when I was having to be around people while I was in pain, that I would intentionally avoid conferences because I was afraid of ableism. I didn't want people to be like, oh my God, Emily is crazy. When, and not like, it wasn't a mental health issue. It was a pain issue.

And I was so embarrassed. And obviously I had to process a lot of ableism in myself, internalized ableism. And so that was part of my journey. And obviously, like I just said, the neurochemistry component was a part of it. And obviously part of it, like we talked about was learning. How to charge what my services are worth.

So there were multiple things that I had to do in my own enrichment plan to get me to a place where I could attend conferences, but that was such a big part of it. And Allie has seen me in that state so many times over the past 11 years that we've been professional lives. I can't believe I left that one off the list.

Thank you for catching that, Ali.

[00:48:16] Allie: That's what I'm here for.

[00:48:17] Emily: It's true. We catch each other when we fall.

Take that

[00:48:22] Allie: Nope, I'm putting it into the intro and everybody is going to hear that cringe.

[00:48:26] Emily: fine. I I'll allow it. You can, you can show the world my cringe. It's fine. Okay. So, the next one is. It's not getting desired results. We're doing the things and we're not getting the outcomes we thought. And just like the previous one, I'm not gonna answer with an answer, I'm gonna answer with a question.

Same question. But why though? Why aren't we getting results? We need to investigate the unmet needs and adjust accordingly. So I have also a non and enrichment activity example of this, where a student of mine was working with a resource guarding case, and they were using a protocol that they had been taught by somebody else that they had had learned from in the past.

And the dog like snapped at the client and almost bit them but just snapped. And the student was just feeling devastated about this. Like, what, what did I do wrong? Like, what's, what's happening? Like I, we did the protocol exactly as it was. As I was taught it and I was like, yes, this is why we don't do pre prescriptive approaches.

This is why a descriptive approach is important because when you prioritize the protocol over the individual and the environment in front of you it's easy to miss things that are happening. And it turned out for that dog using that protocol they felt cornered. They didn't have the freedom to escape.

They were doing it. And I'm not saying that that protocol has never worked for anybody, ever. Obviously by definition, if somebody is teaching it, it means that they've had a lot of success with a lot of animals using that protocol. So the, the take home point of this is not that protocol is bad, throw it out.

The take home point is that we need to use protocols in the context of a descriptive approach so that we can identify how the learner is responding to it in the moment and adjust accordingly. Or better yet, identify that this is not the right protocol for this environment, this context, and not even try it to begin with.

Just start with something that is more likely to meet the learner's needs in that moment. So. I'm only, I like, this was a somewhat recent conversation. So the point of this is not to make anybody feel bad, like it was a beautiful learning opportunity. And I, and I love sharing learning opportunities because we all benefit from that.

But it was such a good example of how if we are not identifying the needs, we're not listening to our learners. We miss signals that they're giving us, we miss components of the environment and we just use a protocol as we've been taught without considering first is this going to meet the needs of this s learner in this context, in this environment. Then yeah, sometimes it's not going to work. We're not gonna get the results that we thought we would get. I am not so secretly hoping that now we switch roles and now you use net enrichment activity. Example, but also you do you

[00:51:28] Allie: Okay. The only one I have is the one is the one that I always go to. Okay. Okay. So my, my example, and I've used this example, I think a lot, and actually I don't know that I've used it on the. Podcast question mark. I don't know. I do a lot of teaching y'all and who knows what I've said to whom? So maybe this is a new example to podcast listeners. Who knows? Let us know. Anywho the example.

I have like half enrichment activity, but like there's a heavy behavior flavor attached to it. I don't know why I can't just do like straight up enrichment activity for you today, Emily. It's just, it's just not where my brain is. So, one of my favorite examples of this is one of my favorite clients that I've ever had, her name was Rosie.

She was a 10 month old golden retriever. And Rosie, to put it kindly, was a hot mess. She had been working with a veterinary behaviorist since she was six months old. And for those of you who are familiar with the journey that a pet parent has to go through to get to a veterinary behaviorist, it's amazing that they had to go through that journey and got there when she was only six months old.

Like that. That says a lot about how much of a hot mess Rosie was. And so Miss Rosie had, if you can think of a maladaptive behavior, she probably did it. What's the word? Expressed it. There we go. She probably expressed it. The only thing that, that she didn't have was resource guarding, which to me is hilarious because she was a golden with maladaptive behaviors and like, that's like one of the most common maladaptive behaviors I see in Goldens, but whatever.

She was like, nah, fam, I'm gonna do everything but that. Cool. You do you Rosie. She had generalized anxiety. She had some separation related anxiety. She had some stranger danger, but it was more complicated. It was very conflicted. Types of stranger danger. She was reactive to other dogs on leash through the windows, all the things.

But the largest problem Rosie had was that anytime she had. Feelings, she would bite her humans. And I'm not talking about like adolescent mouthiness, I'm talking like bruises, ripped clothing multiple times per day. It was really, really serious behavior. And y'all, even though she didn't get the memo that like she should be a resource guarder 'cause she's a golder with maladaptive behaviors.

I'm like making a hella generalizations right now. Don't ignore me. Even though she didn't get that memo, she did get the memo that a, a 10 month goldens have feelings about like, everything in the world. So she did get that stereotypical generalization. Oh, she also had compulsive behaviors. I forgot about that.

[00:54:48] Emily: She didn't get the memo that golden retrievers are supposed to have soft mouths though. So that was the memo that she missed.

[00:54:54] Allie: yes. Yes. Like Whether it was stress, distress, anxiety, fear, or eustress, excitement, happiness, she would bite her humans. And she had a lot of feelings. And so her humans got bit very frequently. So she was a kiddo that we also had to be looking at mental and physical exercise for her in addition to calming, rest, relaxation, all of the behavior stuff we were working on.

Security, independence, all the things. Because her humans would try to meet her physical and mental needs and she would bite them for them for that. And that's not helpful. And also, she's an adolescent and still has a lot of energy that needs to happen. So, we decided let's try food puzzles for mental exercise for her.

We can gate her off. She can do it in the kitchen by herself. Nobody else around. Hopefully she doesn't eat her humans because we have antecedent arrangement. And the, this is my favorite example for using a descriptive instead of prescriptive approach and also not throwing the baby out with the bath water in that her humans tried a bobot toy, a bob lot's, like a weeble weebles wobble, but they don't fall down.

It's weighted at the bottom. There's a hole at the top. She knocks it over and food falls out. And the bob a lot made her behavior worse. She was more likely to bite her humans after she was released from the kitchen after working on a bob a lot. Thankfully her humans. I had learned at this point, descriptive versus prescriptive.

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water, all that. And instead of saying like, well, food puzzles don't work. They're like, this food puzzle does not work, let's try a different one. So they try a tricky treat ball and that's like a ball with a, a hole and you roll it and food falls out. And that made her behavior better.

She was less likely to bite her humans after she was released from the kitchen if she worked on the tricky treat ball. So that was an experience. And I, to this day, we don't really know why the bob a lot, the best that, that we could ascertain from her behaviors is that it, it played into some of the compulsive compulsions that she had.

Like she, it got her into like that kind of. Mindset, for lack of a better word. And so that's, that's one of my favorite examples of investigating when you don't get the desired results.

[00:57:39] Emily: That reminds me that mostly Bri. And copper got along beautifully, had beautiful negotiation skills, didn't guard from each other, but there was one plush toy that they threw down over and, and like almost got into a fight. Like I had to separate them. And I have no idea what it was about that because like, they had a ton of plush toys and they shared them beautifully.

But there was something about that one that they were like, no, this is my, no, it's mine. No it's mine. No, it's mine. And we like, get into fights over. So we just had to like, remove that toy. I, I, I don't know what that was about, but we don't get to know. Right? We don't always get to know. But yeah, that was fascinating.

All right, next one. Second to last. We're almost there. Home stretch friends. It's unsustainable. So like, it works like you can do it, it gets the results you're wanting. It's meeting the needs, but oh my God, the, the prospect of having you do this for the rest of your dog's life or your pet's life feels terrible.

I'm gonna quote Ted Lasso here. The answer to that is. To quote Ted Lasso, keep it simple. Smarty pants. So that's like the, the, the kiss, the kiss guidelines, right? Of like, if it's unsustainable, how can you pare it down without sacrificing impact?

And I'm gonna be my own example for this because when I first got Miley and I would do her like anywhere, but here protocol, I was like, I have to do all these different variations. There have to be like so many different types of things. And it still only took me 15 minutes, so it wasn't labor intensive.

But after a few weeks of that, it got really mentally exhausting of like, oh God, how do I, how do I make it novel now?

So one day I was having just like a really bad pain day and I was like, sorry Miley, I just have to half-ass this because I can't, I just don't have the brain space to, to be creative for you. And so I literally just like tore up some paper and put a few pieces of kibble in each one, balled it up in different ways, and then just threw the paper balls like all over the office in different places and tuck them around.

And she was like, this is the best day ever. She spent the same amount of time foraging. And she rested for just as long afterwards as she had been when I had been doing the more creative setup. And I was like, okay, cool. I'm not gonna do the creativity stuff anymore because it's not actually impacting the outcomes in any meaningful way.

And it is, the cognitive load is just too heavy for me to carry on a regular daily basis. So I, every once in a while, if I'm feeling, if I've got a little extra verb and I'm feeling a little creative and I wanna make it special, I'll go back to my old pattern of like, making it clever.

But most days now it's just like pieces of kibble and balled up paper thrown around the office and it'll take her like two hours to find it all and eat it, eat it all, and then she naps until lunchtime. So it, it does what it's supposed to do. And it's so much easier. So, that's just a really good example of like, if it's unsustainable, keep it as simple as possible, pare it down.

How can you make it more simple without compromising the efficacy? Right? We want it to still have the same outcomes. And I will say whether you're a pet parent or a professional, sometimes this requires brainstorming. Sometimes other people are gonna have ideas that you can't have because you haven't had life experiences that set you up to have those ideas.

So, it's okay to be like, here's the issue, here's what I'm doing. Here are the outcomes. Can anybody think of a way to make it more simple? Like simplicity is elegance and, and sometimes we need help from friends to be as elegant as we can be. So, just saying it's okay to reach out for help.

[01:01:43] Allie: Yeah, I, I think I see this so frequently that we as humans just like really want to make things complicated. And I've talked to enough people at this point, especially in the animal welfare industry. I don't know, maybe we're just all a bunch of weirdos, but at least in the animal welfare industry. One I've asked people like.

But why though? So many people have told me that they feel like it's cheating if it's not hard or it's not complicated or convoluted. And so there's, there's like something there where, we feel like it's not effective if, if we don't have to like really work for it or if it's hard or complicated.

And so I think part of this of keeping it simple smarty pans, which is so cute is somebody who hasn't seen more than one episode of Ted Lasso and that was on an airplane because that's where I had access to it. I think part of it is also exploring your mindset of why do I feel like it has to be hard in order to be effective?

[01:02:51] Emily: So first of all, I'm going to give you an enrichment plan and tell you to watch Ted Lasso because it will improve your welfare and wellbeing. It just will. It's Ted Lasso is one of the best shows that has ever happened to humankind. You just need to watch it. It's one of my comfort shows. I watch it frequently.

I have it practically memorized at this point. You need to watch it. But secondly, yes, I can speak for me at least. The reason that historically I have felt that I need to keep it fancy is because of my overemphasis on novelty. So I can't speak for everybody, but for me, I believed that novelty was such an important part of enrichment, that if it wasn't novel, it wasn't enriching.

That was like past me working way too hard. To enrich the learners in my care because I overemphasize novelty. And I am not saying that novelty doesn't have a place, I'm not saying that novelty can be enriching. It's certain it, Nope, that's not a word. Certainly not a word. It certainly can be. And I think it's important to recognize when our learners need novelty and when it does benefit them.

But novelty is not a requirement for enrichment to happen. And so I think for, for me anyway, for my personal journey that journey to simplicity got a lot easier when I was able to let go of my beliefs, that novelty had to be a component of it. And I can't speak for everybody, but that was my journey.

[01:04:31] Allie: I think that's probably true for a lot of people.

[01:04:33] Emily: Yeah, we gotta let that go because it's better to do something that is. Awesome, but repetitive than it is to do like really cool novel stuff and then burnout and not do anything after that. So let, let's go for, enrichment is a marathon, not a sprint. Okay, next. It's too expensive. Actually last, this is the last one we got there.

Yay. Go us. It's too expensive. And the re the answer to that is DDIY. I don't have foraging puzzles anymore. I used to, I had a lot. I don't anymore because. I think they're great. I'm not against them. I'm not telling people not to buy them. Please do buy them if they work for you and your learners and your environment.

Go food puzzles. I'm on Team Food Puzzle. I'm not against them, but for me, I'm a trash panda and I was broke for so long because as we have discussed already, I pro bono myself into poverty for most of my career until Allie dragged me kicking and screaming through the realization that I should get paid what my services are worth.

But because of that, most of the time I was just broke. I couldn't afford things. And also when we ran Austin Parrot Society, we just did not have funds. We, we weren't a nonprofit, so we couldn't get donations, which meant we had to fund the whole project. And so I just learned how to use trash to my benefit.

So well, so thoroughly that I just don't pay for things very often anymore. And in fact, I don't know if I'm allowed to say it yet. So I'm just gonna be vague and say pay attention to conferences where I might be speaking in the future, because I actually am going to be talking on how to do free or cheap enrichment activities because this is like my jam.

It's my whole jam is how can you really, really take care of your learners when you've got no money? I, I am the best person to speak about this because I've spent my entire life being broke. So I'm really good at being broke. I'm just, I'm just bragging. Like this is just my, I'm just tooting my own horn here.

I I crush it at being broke. So, so do the DIY thing, use trash. Like I said, I just use packing paper every day to do Miley's little treasure hunt. I don't buy packing paper. I just, whenever we get boxes that have a paper in them, I'm like, I like a little trash panda. I'm like, oh, I'm saving that paper.

I'm gonna use that later. So just like learn how to use your trash. And I'm not gonna be more detailed than that because first of all, this episode is already pretty long. Secondly, there are other places where I will go into more detail. And thirdly, there's just so many different options like that. The internet has lots of ideas for you.

There we go. That's my spiel. DIY is the solution to, it's too expensive. I.

[01:07:31] Allie: I would also say, because there's the item element of this, there's also the human element of it where it, there are things like doggy daycares and dog walkers and pet sitters and all of this. And a lot of times I have this discussion when I'm working with a client with separation anxiety and we're working on their management plan of how can there be a human around that doesn't have to be this particular human if the pet allows it to be not this particular human.

And a lot of times I'm like, you know what? High school kids who don't have pets but want a pet would absolutely love to hang out at your house for like five bucks an hour. With your pet. So a lot of times you can find somebody in your community who just wants to hang out with your animal or take them on a walk or do whatever it is.

And, and maybe they're not as skilled as somebody who is a professional pet sitter, but a lot of times it will do. It will be fine.

[01:08:33] Emily: Yeah, I mean I started off before I became a behavior consultant as a pet sitter specializing in animals with medical and behavioral special needs. And when clients would contact me and be like, I can't afford your services. First of all, that is partially why I pro bono myself into poverty because I had a big soft heart, but often I like was so, I was so booked that I couldn't take them on anyway.

Like I couldn't pro bono because I was so booked and I would, I would ask 'em about their pets and if their pets didn't have any special needs, I would be like, I. I don't think you need a professional pet sitter for this. I think you can just get a friend or family member because you, if your pet is physically, behaviorally and emotionally healthy and you've got safe walking tools and you can show them the ropes as long as they're reliable and trustworthy, I think you, this can be a, a community, like a mutual aid type of thing.

It doesn't have to be a business type of thing. And again, I'm not anti-business. I ran a pet sitting business. I'm not anti pet sitter, but being able to help people by identifying when they don't need a professional is an important component of enriching everybody. Right.

[01:09:49] Allie: All right, so today we talked about how to make sure your enrichment is a treat, not a trick, and, make sure that it's actually enriching. All right. The first is to make sure that you hit the sweet spot between doing too much and not enough. The next is to make sure you hit the sweet spot between it being too easy and too difficult, and then asking questions of like if it's too arousing, but why though? Also, if it's not getting desired results, but why though? Finally, going into the human elements of making an enrichment plan actually enriching for everybody involved, and that goes into sustainability and expenses. 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. Here's a little bonus enrichment tip to thank you for listening to this episode. For those of you who want to include DIY destructible, like what Emily talked about, but are worried about your dog ingesting inedible items, heads of lettuce or cabbage are great destructible that are also edible.