Dogs begin, knowing our human world through their five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Our sensory enrichment training focuses on stimulating these senses to offer your furry friend a full and engaging life. The average Breeder probably already provides some sensory enrichment, like offering treats and taking walks, but additional stimulation provides additional benefits. That’s why we put extreme focus on the five senses from the day they are born.

Why Sensory Enrichment MattersSensory enrichment is important because it helps to:Reduce Stress and Anxiety: Sensory experiences can be soothing and help lower stress levels.Improve Behavior: Engaging your dog’s senses helps reduce boredom-related behaviors like chewing and barking.Enhance Learning and Training: Stimulating your dog’s senses can improve their focus and responsiveness during training and create an early triggering of the frontal lobe. This is extremely important for your pup to be able to make right and wrong decisions in their new human world.Boost Overall Happiness: A sensory-rich environment contributes to a dog’s mental and emotional well-being.Enrichment Ideas for Each SenseSIGHTCompared to humans, dogs can see better in the dark, have a wider field of view, and can see moving objects more clearly, helping them with hunting and tracking. Engaging their sense of sight lets them hone these instincts and excite their minds.New Scenery: We started this in your fur-baby’s fourth week of life. You can continue this by taking your dog to different parks, trails, and urban areas. New sights expand their world!Blue or Yellow Toys: Dogs can only see shades of blue, yellow, gray, and brown. Help us continue your pup’s development. To help them see different shades of colors choosing toys that are these colors makes them easier for dogs to see and expands their color palette.Hand Signals: Dogs are excellent at understanding body language. During training sessions, incorporate hand signals as we have, with verbal commands to accelerate their learning.SMELLDogs have an extraordinary sense of smell. They have more than 100 million sensory receptors in their noses, compared to 6 million in humans, allowing them to smell between 1,000 to 10,000 times better.Scent Trails: Drag highly aromatic treats with various smells along the ground to create a scent trail, and let your dog follow the trail to find the treat. Or, simply hide the treat somewhere easy to find.
Snuffle Mats: These mats are designed to hide treats among fabric strips, encouraging your dog to use their nose to sniff out the rewards.
Herb Gardens: Create a sensory garden with aromatic, dog-safe herbs, like chamomile, lavender, rosemary, and mint, and let your dog sniff and explore.
HEARINGDogs have a keen sense of hearing — about 4-5 times as sensitive as humans. They can detect very high-pitched sounds that humans cannot, and they can hear sounds from much further away.New Sounds: Expose your dog to various sounds, like different types of music, nature sounds, or city noises. Which sounds do they enjoy?Squeaker Toys: Toys that make sounds when squeezed or moved provide auditory enrichment during play.
Auditory Cues: Incorporating noise into training can improve their focus and reinforce learning. Whether it’s a verbal command, clicker, whistle, or unique call, you can teach them to associate the sound with a desired response.
TASTETaste is an obvious but sometimes overlooked sense when it comes to enrichment.Treat Variety: Want to see that tail take off? Offer them a new treat flavor! Rewards can be made from many flavors like chicken, bacon, beef, and peanut butter, providing a delightful range of your dog’s taste buds.Food Puzzles: Most breeders miss this step! Puppies need levels 1 to 4 puzzle toys, to be able to use interactive toys later in life. If they miss these first crucial steps your pup will simply try to strong-arm or pounce on anything they cannot immediately open. Instead of using their brain, they will use brute force. Treat dispensing toys and food puzzles make meals and playtime more stimulating, but if your fur-baby was not trained correctly on how to use their brain in the early stages of life, they will never be able to use enrichment toys. For dogs that gobble up their food in seconds, food puzzles also help slow their eating to aid digestion and satisfaction.Pup-sicles: Make delicious frozen treats at home! Place a reward in each compartment of an ice cube tray, fill partway with water, broth, or wet food, then freeze. They’re perfect for those dog days of summer.TOUCHPhysical touch, as well as tactile experiences, are vital for dogs’ well-being. Here is what we have done for your dog.Massage from day 3 on this planet: Regular massages can be both relaxing and stimulating for your dog. Focus on areas they enjoy being touched, like their face, neck, and ears, and use it as a bonding activity.
Textures: We introduced your dog to various textures, like rubber toys, plush blankets, and textured surfaces like grass and sand. Have a hose handy? Let them play in the mud!
Interactive Play: Play games that involve physical contact, such as tug-of-war or fetch. Reward them with all the pats and belly rubs they desire. Enrichment activities like these are more than boredom busters. By engaging their senses, you are stimulating their minds and bodies and giving them a richer, more fulfilling life — exactly what your best friend deserves. Help us continue the amazing start your pup has had by continually engaging in this type of play.
=========When training a puppy, the most important sense to utilize is their smell, as dogs have a highly developed sense of smell that far surpasses their other senses, making it a powerful tool for learning and motivation during training; however, you should also incorporate sight, hearing, touch, and taste to provide a well-rounded training experience.Key points about puppy training and senses:
Smell (most important):Dogs can detect incredibly subtle scents, making scent-based training very effective.
Use scent games to teach commands or encourage desired behaviors.
Hiding treats with different scents can help with searching and problem-solving.

Sight:Visual cues like hand signals can be combined with verbal commands for clarity.
Consider your puppy's vision limitations, as they may not see as well as adults.

Hearing:Use a consistent tone of voice for commands.
Be aware of background noise that might distract your puppy.

Touch:Gentle petting and positive reinforcement through touch can be rewarding.
Utilize different textures during training to stimulate tactile senses.

Taste:Treats are a crucial part of positive reinforcement, but be mindful of your puppy's dietary needs.
Use different flavors to add interest to training sessions.
==========Did you know that training often requires our canine companions to utilize multiple senses? The five dog senses – sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing – all play an important part in the training process, as dogs learn to listen for specific signals, recognize certain cues, identify unique textures, and more!Sight provides critical information during the training process by offering important visual information alongside verbal cues. This is why many animal behaviorists and trainers will recommend using a hand gesture along with a voice command. Supplementing a voice command with a visual provides extra clues to help you communicate with your furry one. Smell As natural-born hunters, dogs use their noses to identify and locate objects of interest. The smell can be a strong motivator, which is why treats should be kept hidden until a task has been accomplished; treats can be downright distracting if your pooch catches sight – or smell – of them.However, the smell can work to your benefit during training. Pee pads, for instance, are helpful during potty training, because they have a unique odor and texture in addition to offering a clear visual marker. Utilizing an indoor dog bathroom can emphasize those qualities that pups are naturally drawn to. Subscribe to a fresh grass pee pad today for a pet potty that feels intuitive to your furry one’s instincts! Touch is often underrated when it comes to training. Humans tend to think that sight, smell, and hearing are the only senses at work. However, touch is vital for dogs, who use their paws to explore the world around them. It’s one reason they love to dig! When training, different textures can provide critical cues for the learning process.Work with your pup’s sense of touch for potty training by using a wee pad. The different textures in addition to the unique scent of a real grass pee pad-like offer offer extra cues that inform your dog about where and where not to “go.”TasteTaste is another sense that is commonly overlooked. But considering that dogs develop their sense of taste before they can even see, it plays an important role in their lives. It’s no wonder that treats send such a major signal to a dog’s brain! While taste may play less of a role during training (aside from the tasty rewards they receive), they guide canines by alerting them to potentially toxic plants and other dangerous items.HearingAs you might already know, dogs have an incredible sense of hearing that supports their hunting instincts. This not only provides them with a broader range of hearing than humans, but their fine-tuned hearing also helps them identify the owner of different voices and noises. This explains why a dog may listen to a command from their human, but not another person that they’re less familiar with. A dog’s sensitivity to sound is one of the reasons why clicker training has been successful for so many pups and their pawrents. The brief, distinctive sound of our unique type of snap and clicker training sends a clear message to your dog about whether or not they’re on the right track.