#146 - Try It: Create Your Enrichment Menu

Ever find yourself staring at your pet thinking, “What do we even do for enrichment again?” Same. Today we’re walking through how to build your pet’s Enrichment Menu: a simple, sanity-saving list of activities you already know help you and your pet.

We’ll chat through how to brain-dump everything you’ve ever tried, how to remember what actually worked, and how to sort it all out so Future You (the tired, overwhelmed, “I can’t handle one more thing” version) can grab the right option without thinking. Whether you’re prepping for a big life change or just trying to survive a Tuesday, your enrichment menu can make meeting your pet’s needs feel doable, even when you’re oh so tired. 

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

1️⃣ Your brain isn’t broken – When life gets messy, it’s normal to forget all the good things you’ve done with your pet. Reduce your cognitive load and create a reference menu. 

2️⃣ The magic is in knowing the outcome, not just the activity – Not all activities are enrichment, but most activities are effort. Tracking how each activity affects your pet helps you choose what they need right now.

3️⃣ Categorizing by effort + effectiveness = stress-saving clarity – Sorting activities into four buckets makes it easy to grab a high-effect, low-effort option when you’re exhausted, or proactively plan ahead when a big life change is coming.

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

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ellen: there's a lot that I can't do with my pets when I have thrown out my back. So knowing what are those low effort, high effectiveness activities, particularly that I am able to do when I am less mobile than my typical day to day has been really helpful in reducing that stress for me to be able to meet my dog's needs while I'm down for the count.

[00:00:23] 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...

[00:00:40] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:42] 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. 

[00:01:02] Ellen: Welcome friends, and today we're gonna talk about creating your pet's enrichment menu. I don't know about you, but I am a 30 something year old lady that every time I go to make a meal plan for the week, you would think I've never made dinner a day in my life. I can't remember a single thing that I have ever.

Made, and I see this happen a lot with my clients and their pets, where they have trialed and eval so many different activities and they have done so much to get to know their pet. And yet when things change, they forget everything that they have ever done. They have no idea what they can do to pull out to help their pet regulate or to settle or to get adequate physical movement into their day or mental stimulation or any of those things.

So what I usually recommend clients, particularly before a major life transition, like moving, starting a new job, adding some other living, being to the family, just a general upheaval and routine is we take some time to create what we call the enrichment menu. And this will help you as a human when your brain is overwhelmed, overtired, overcommitted, and ready to maybe go take a nap. To be able to say, oh yeah, I did do this with my pet, and they really benefited from it. And here is how.

So the steps to making your pet's enrichment menu, one is sit down. If you don't have to sit down, maybe get a pen and paper, maybe a voice recorder, maybe type it out, some notes, and just brain dump everything that you can remember that you have done with your pet. If you need to go and open their toy bin or look through your phone at videos you've taken to remind yourself of the things you've done, go ahead and do it. We're gonna start with just listing the things that we have done with our pet.

For example, things that I have done with Leika in the past are her rehabilitation and fitness exercises. Long walks at the park, taking short walks to get the mail, going to car rides for the store, frozen. Lickable, shreddable, destructible, Kongs, playing with me, playing with Griffey, playing with my partner, so on and so forth.

Once you have a list of things that you remember that you have done with your pet, now you wanna go ahead and list what you think you remember were the outcomes of that activity so that you are able to know when to pull it out. What is going to be the most helpful for you. So for Leica, when we do her.

Canine conditioning fitness. Long walks at the park, we see that she has improved movement and we see that she rests more. When we do the short walks to the male, we see that she gets much more jazzed, and then we're going to need to do some play, either really low key fetch or playing with me or my partner or Griffey, so it gets her heart rate up and she's better prepared for activities.

If we do things like frozen lickable or shreddable, we know that she's busy for roughly 10 to 20 minutes and is going to rest after the fact. Both of those are gonna require some cleanup from me, and that is gonna be some information that's important for you in a next step.

So we've already done step one, which is brain dump, everything you can think of that you have done with your dog. Step two is. To list what you remember the outcome being like what was the benefit of those activities for your pet?

And then step three, we're going to put them into, uh, four different buckets. We are gonna put them in a bucket that is high effectiveness. High effort. So what we mean by that is when we do this activity, we get a lot of benefit from it, from our pet. We either get significantly more rest. This is going to be subjected to what you think is a benefit for your pet. We get more rest, we get more activity, we get better movement, we get, more resiliency towards triggers. We get more affiliation towards members in the family. We get more play, we get more engagement. You get to decide what high effectiveness means based on what you want out of this activity with your pet, and then high effort, this is what it means for you. So things that pull you away entirely from. What you need to be doing. Things that require a lot of prep, things that require booking and events. So like if you do nose work trials, that's gonna be high effort just is. So we wanna know of the things on the list, what is both highly effective for your pet and high effort for you. Go ahead and notate that somehow.

The next category is low effectiveness and high effort. So what are some of the things that are moderately effective? Like you might get some effect, but they're really higher effort for you. For example, taking like to get the mail. It's pretty low effectiveness, very high effort. Getting her leashed up, getting the treat pouch, making sure that we don't get run up on by other dogs, making sure that Griffey is taken care of while I take her out. There's a lot that goes into just that short walk to getting the mail. It is high effort for me. Low effectiveness for her. It's nice, but really I don't see a lasting effect for her.

The next category is high effectiveness, low effort. These are going to be the things that are very easy for you to put together, require very little from you, and show you really good effect for your pet.

And this is, again, going to be dependent on both your pet's needs and goals and your needs and goals. For us in my house, things that are high effect low effort are going to be shreddable and foraging boxes or. Lickable, frozen, lickable, all of those are very good at eliciting rest from my dogs. They get very relaxed. All of their muscles get into a puddle and they just, they just look blissful.

And then the last category is low effectiveness, low effort. These may be some of the things that don't have a huge impact. It's not night and day difference, but are very easy for you to execute. So for example, cuddle time with myself or my partner would be low effectiveness, low effort. We don't see a lot of long-term effect if we do more cuddle time for our pets, but it's also very low effort.

The three steps we have already done. The first one is to brain dump the things that you have done with your pet, or you know that your pet does kind of on their own. It doesn't necessarily need to include you.

The second one is to list the outcome of those activities. What do you see as a result of doing those activities with your pet? And then the third step is to bucket those activities and the outcomes that you listed into four. Categories, high effectiveness, high effort, low effectiveness, high effort, high effectiveness, low effort, and low effectiveness. Low effort. I will put a graphic in the show notes. It makes it a little bit easier.

And then what you wanna do is put this somewhere that you are able. To easily find it when you are stressed. So when I have a client go through this exercise, it is usually, again, in preparation for a major life event.

It is always nice when we have it, and there just happens to be a life event. But for example, I had a client that was planning a cross country move. We knew it was gonna be stressful for them in the pet. We knew that there was going to be a lot of change in the routine. And so for them, I wanted them to have a. Thing before they were packing for their trip, we did this exercise. So they knew that in the car with them, they needed to pack their dog's ball. They needed to pack their dog's bed, they needed to pack a couple of lick things and they needed to pack. The L line because when they got to their final destination in the trip, they knew that they needed to help their pet complete their stress response cycle.

We needed to make sure that they were gonna have an environment that they were comfortable sleeping. We needed to make sure that we could get some sniffy walks in, both for the human and the dog. And so when we did this in preparation for the move, the client knew what could be packed up in the the moving. Van that was going to meet them in the final location versus what needed to be prioritized in the singular car that they were driving to the new location.

For me, this has always been incredibly helpful When something happens like I throw out my back because that happens more than should probably happen. There's a lot that I can't do with my pets when I have thrown out my back. So knowing what are those low effort, high effectiveness activities, particularly that I am able to do when I am less mobile than my typical day to day has been really helpful in reducing that stress for me to be able to meet my dog's needs while I'm down for the count.

So again, the steps are number one. List of the things that you do with your dog or you see your dog doing

number two, you're going to list the outcomes of those activities.

Number three, you're gonna bucket them based on effectiveness and effort.

Then number four, we're gonna put it somewhere that you're gonna remember to do it. And if you're like me and forget that you've ever made dinner in your entire life, you probably wanna put it somewhere where you can visually see as a reminder that you did it.

With that good luck and happy training. 

[00:10:51] 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. So what I usually recommend clients, particularly before a major life transition, like moving, starting a new job, adding some other living, being to the family, just a general upheaval and routine is that we take a sit, have a think, have a seat, and take a think. I don't know what the right order of those words happens to be.