Learn DIY dog mental stimulation toys and how to make cat toys out of household items to enhance your pets’ well-being.
Have you ever wondered what truly excites your pet? Is it the thrill of a scent, the joy of the chase, or the challenge of solving a puzzle? Our pets need more than just food, water, and shelter to thrive. Enrichment plays a crucial role in enhancing their physical and mental well-being, but you don’t need to splurge on expensive toys. Here are some fantastic ideas for homemade enrichment toys and activities to keep your pets engaged and happy.
Promoting Healthy Activity
Although our pets are domesticated, they share many behaviors and needs with their wild counterparts. Whether it’s scratching, hunting, foraging, or chewing, your pet needs healthy ways to let their wild side out. Environmental enrichment helps pets express their natural behaviors in a way that fits into your household.
By providing safe outlets, you can help avoid misdirected, destructive, and frustrating behaviors. For example, both wild and domestic cats have an instinctive need to scratch surfaces. Without enrichment tools, such as scratching posts, house cats will claw up couches and carpets. Enrichment can also help tire active pets, resulting in a more peaceful coexistence. It’s not just about unwanted behaviors, though!
Enrichment has been shown to decrease stress, to improve cognitive abilities, and to support physical health. While nothing can completely prevent disease, adding enrichment is an affordable and easy way to improve your pet’s long-term welfare.
Good enrichment will interest your pet and make them want to engage. When adding new toys, start with things your pet already wants to do. If you have a dog who loves to sniff while you’re out on walks, olfactory (aka smelly) enrichment will likely be a great match.
Tailoring your strategy to species, breed, and motivation will help your pet stay engaged and continue reaping the benefits. You’ll know you’re doing it right when the new toys or puzzles bring out playful and varied behaviors, pulling your pet out of their shell.
You can enrich your pet’s life in a variety of ways. From offering them a vibrant social life to making mealtimes more mentally stimulating, opportunities for enrichment abound! However, anything your pet can chew on or eat can turn into a dangerous foreign body, so all new toys should only be used with supervision. Consult your veterinarian before making changes to diet or activity levels.
Social Enrichment
Socialization may not be the first thing to cross your mind when you think about enrichment, but it’s an important piece of the puzzle. Social interactions provide excellent mental stimulation and encourage activity in your pet’s daily routine.
From dog parks to hiking trails, it’s great to get dogs out of the house and introduce them to other pups. Cats can also find interactions with other cats rewarding, but they tend to be wary of newcomers. Introducing a new member to the family should always be a slow and careful process.
You can also craft DIY pet toys. “Flirt toys” are easy to make at home and provide excellent social enrichment for cats and dogs. A flirt toy is a long stick with a toy dangling off the end by a length of string. For dogs, tie a toy or ball to a broom handle or PVC pipe with a sturdy rope of twine. A similar setup works for cats, although you can use a shorter handle, such as a kitchen spoon or dowel. Flirt toys are great for active pets who like to chase after things, and playing together can help you bond with your furry buddy.
Nutritional Enrichment
Mealtime is one of the best opportunities to enrich your pet’s day. Many pets love feeding time, which can motivate them to engage with new toys. While you’ll find many puzzle feeders, snuffle mats, and other tools on the market, making your own enrichment feeders at home is cheap and easy.
The timing of your feedings may be more important than you think. Cats thrive when they’re fed more frequently because of their natural hunting behaviors. By splitting your cat’s food into scheduled, frequent meals, you can make sure they don’t overindulge while also providing shorter intervals between meals.
Puzzle feeders are a simple way to spice up meal times. For cats, try sprinkling kibble into the sections of an ice-cube tray. This will force them to slow down and use their brains to figure out how to get the kibble out. Kibble in a muffin tin works great for dogs, and you can even add tennis balls over the holes to make the puzzle harder.
DIY Cat Toys: Toilet Paper Rolls
Toilet-paper rolls also make excellent puzzle feeders. For cats and small dogs, cut a hole in one side of a tube and fold over each end. Put a few treats or kibble into the tube, and let your pet figure out how to get the reward. Hiding these puzzle feeders around your home is a great way to mimic the hunting a cat would naturally do.
Freezing a thin layer of wet food on a dish or mat can provide a cooling treat that engages your pet’s instinct to lick and keeps them occupied.
Sensory Enrichment
Sensory cues are how most species communicate and understand the world. By catering to the sensory systems of your pets, you can provide enrichment that will fascinate and benefit them.
The nose is a critical organ for cats and dogs. Adding some smell-based activities can really engage the minds of our furry friends. If you have a dog who loves to sniff everything while you’re out and about, try offering some olfactory enrichment. Scent hounds, such as beagles and bassets, can be trained to search for high-appeal (stinky) treats.
For cats, try growing your own catnip plants at home and offering leaves (fresh or dry) to your cats. Keep your catnip planted in a pot: It’s in the mint family, so it’ll quickly take over your garden.
Snuffle mats can also be a fun game for dogs and cats. You can easily make a snuffle mat yourself. Try hiding treats in a rolled or folded towel and letting your dog seek them out. Once they have that down, make a more complex mat by cutting strips of fleece and knotting them to a rubber bathmat base. Scatter kibble into the mat and let your pet seek out the individual pieces. Just make sure they aren’t scarfing down any fabric with their dinner.
Occupational Enrichment
Many dogs enjoy having a “job” to do. This is especially true of working breeds, such as shepherds and hounds. DIY agility courses are a great way to work dogs that need a lot of physical activity.
Use your furniture and high-value treats to train your dog to leap, climb, and zigzag, just like they do in dog shows. You can also make DIY fetch toys for retrievers by knotting rope to form a ball. Just make sure your toy is too large to be swallowed.
Environmental Enrichment
Beyond toys, you can add enrichment items to your pet’s environment to keep them engaged throughout the day. Cats love to scratch as a stress reliever and as a way of keeping their nails short. Carpet remnants and samples are perfect for this job and cost almost nothing. You can even nail them to the wall to give your cat a mounted scratching surface.
Cats also enjoy hiding in dark, cozy spots. Instead of expensive tunnels and cat beds, opt for paper bags and cardboard boxes. While these hiding places aren’t the most attractive, your cats will love them just as much (if not more), and they’ll be easy to replace once damaged.
Improving Pet Welfare
Incorporating enrichment into your pet’s life is not only rewarding but also essential for their overall well-being.
These principles can be used to entertain all creatures great and small, from guinea pigs to backyard birds and beyond. Your pets rely on you to give them the chance to explore and engage with the world around them. By investing in their enrichment, you’ll create a fulfilling life for your beloved companions.
Amelia Eigerman is an emergency-room veterinary technician with a passion for science communication. They hope to help pet owners learn more about how to keep their animals healthy and thriving.
