Tips For Helping Your Dog's Mental Health

 Your dog's mental health is just as important as his or her physical health, both areas of well-being are intrinsically linked and depend on the other.

Dogs have varied needs depending on many variables and factors, so it is important as owners to consider the needs of each individual dog and how those needs will alter throughout the dog's life.

Here are just a few tips and areas to consider so that you can help your dog maintain optimum mental health.

1: Feed your dog healthy food! Diet has a huge impact on a dog's physical and mental health so it is always important to ensure that our dogs have an appropriate and nutritious diet.

2: Ensure that your dog feels safe within his or her living space. If your dog is constantly on high alert at home then life will be stressful for your dog. All dogs need to be able to switch off and relax and all dogs need safe spaces within their home where they can do this.

3: Provide appropriate physical exercise every day. It is important for each owner to evaluate and understand their dog's individual requirements in terms of physical exercise and also how these requirements will change throughout the dog's life. Varied physical exercise is also important for optimum physical and mental health, just one example is to include slower-paced work as well as livelier exercise. An appropriate balance is key to supporting both your dog's physical and mental health.

4: Provide appropriate and daily mental stimulation. As with exercise it is important that owners understand their dog's individual needs and these will vary. However, all dogs of every type, breed and life stage need daily mental stimulation and a lack of this will certainly lead to problems.

5: Provide daily enrichment for your dog. Canine enrichment can be defined as activities that enable dogs to engage in their innate behaviours such as sniffing, exploring, chasing, chewing etc. While it is true that many of our dog's natural and hard-wired instincts lead to behaviours that many owners do not like, it is still crucial to remember that our pet dogs are still dogs. Therefore it is important that we provide our dogs with healthy opportunities to express their own natural behaviours. If we fail to provide our dogs with essential enrichment opportunities they will surely find ways to enrich themselves, often resulting in unwanted behaviours.

6: Prepare your dog for the life that he or she must lead. Your dog has many natural coping mechanisms for dealing with perceived problems, challenges, surprises, stress and all kinds of stimuli. It is usually true that a dog's natural coping methods tend to result in all the behaviours that humans do not like. Without a doubt, our dogs need our help so that they can live happily within our human-orientated world. If your dog is not trained and prepared for the life you expect him to lead then life will be difficult and stressful for both of you.

7: Give your dog plenty of attention every day including some 121 attention. Whether your dog has been bred for pet or for working purposes, he or she will want your attention and will enjoy various levels of attention and activities. Sometimes your dog will enjoy hanging out with the whole family and if you have more than one dog they will do well if they enjoy spending time as part of the gang. Sometimes the time will be quiet companionship, sometimes something more interactive and sometimes your dog will spend short periods of time away from you. A healthy balance that meets your dog's needs is important. If you have more than one dog it is very worthwhile to try and make sure that you take some time each day to give them some constructive 121 attention, even if that is only ten minutes of individual training it is of huge benefit to your dog and stacks up to plenty of attention over each month.