When I search for enrichment for high-energy dogs, I see a lot of advice about how to tire them out. Enrichment activities can be a great way to get your dog working mentally and physically. Exercising their brain and body can help your dog burn off excess energy.

But what about enrichment to relax high-energy dogs and activities that can teach your anxious dog how to calm down?

That’s something that’s often overlooked. But knowing how to relax is essential for a healthy dog.

High-energy dogs or nervous dogs with anxiety might not have a lot of practice with relaxing. As a dog parent (or dog owner, dog guardian… whatever resonates with you!), it’s our job to give our dogs a lifestyle and home environment that allows them to relax and rest.

Dog enrichment activities can teach calm, relaxed behaviors. Over time, this will build your dog’s confidence so they’re comfortable settling down.

Personally, this is important to me because my rescue dog Burt has a lot of anxiety. When I adopted him at 6 years old, he had a hard time relaxing. He just stood around or paced for the first few weeks. Poor boy!

While he still has anxiety, he’s learned to lie down and have some impulse control. Some of that might be due to him being 12 years old now. But a lot of his coping skills are thanks to our enrichment activities and rewards-based training.

I’ll tell you more about Burt and what activities work well for him later in this post!

*If your dog has major behavioral issues, please consult with your veterinarian or an experienced dog behaviorist. While enrichment has helped my anxious dog, Burt, I also have a prescription from our vet for especially high-anxiety moments like travel. 

*One more disclaimer before we dive in here. This post may contain affiliate links. When you click and buy from my links, I may earn a small commission. It doesn’t cost you anything, but it helps me keep the lights on here at Wear Wag Repeat. Thank you for your support! 

Why Your Dog Can’t Relax: Understanding Their Anxiety

Pacing, panting, frustration. These can be signs that your dog is nervous, has seperation anxiety, or just can’t relax.

Other common signs of anxiety to look for in your dog are if, “they often yawn, bark, howl, and whine. Some of this is anxiety but often they are just really bored,” according to Charlotte Burn of The Royal Veterinary College.

This boredom is something we can address with canine enrichment activities.

One of the instructors in my Canine Enrichment Certification program, DogNostics faculty member and dog trainer Louise Stapleton-Frappell says, “Many dogs are left alone for a long time with nothing to do. A lack of an enriching environment can lead to problem behaviors.”

That enriching environment doesn’t just mean the decor and furniture around your home – but that can have something to do with it!

What Louise means when she talks about an enriching environment includes your dog’s home, the places they go outside of the home, activities or games you play together, and the food they eat. It’s their whole lifestyle.

If you aren’t giving your dog outlets for mental and physical enrichment, they will usually find ways on their own. And it’s usually not going to be something you like… imagine problem behaviors like digging in the yard, annoying barking, chewing up your shoes, or getting into things in the kitchen.

Dogs gravitate towards these kinds of things to try to entertain themselves. They aren’t being bad, they’re probably just bored or anxious.

Enrichment To Relax High-Energy Dogs and Manage Your Dog’s Anxiety

If any of the above sounds familiar, adding more enrichment to relax high energy dogs could help. But instead of reaching for high-impact, super-stimulating activities to tire your dog out, I recommend you try calming enrichment games.

Calming games where you reward your dog for relaxing and using impulse control can rewire your dog’s brain.

Think about it… Let’s say you have a high energy or anxious dog who barks, whines, and nudges you to play with them all the time.

So you toss a ball to placate them while you’re trying to watch TV or have a Zoom call. You buy your dog tons of toys and have them out in every room. After work, you take your furry friend to the park where they see other dogs and people.

That’s a whole lot of stimulation for your dog. Instead of tiring them out, you’re amping them up throughout the day.

So let’s flip the script! How can you encourage calm behaviors with your dog? Let’s start with environmental enrichment (that’s 1 of 7 categories of canine enrichment).

Reduce Stimulation to Help Your Dog Relax

First of all, put 80% of your dog’s toys away. I know, you’re thinking, “Tori, that’s mean, why would I do that?!” It’s because having all these toys around is a lot of mental stimulation for your dog.

It’s hard to relax when there are so many things to fetch, squeak, or rip apart all over the place.

So start by putting most of your dog’s toys away in a closet. Then, rotate the toys each week. You can turn this into a fun routine! Every Sunday night the toys get swapped out. Your dog will be so excited to see what comes out of the closet!

They will want to play with the toys they have each week instead of getting bored and finding their own amusement (like barking, digging, or getting into some other kind of trouble).

Make Your Dog Walks More Mentally Enriching

Next, let’s turn some of your outdoor exercise into sniff walks. If your dog is used to running, playing fetch and other high-drive physical activity, it might take them some time to remember how to use their nose.

But sniff walks – allowing and encouraging your dog to sniff – are a great exercise for their mind! So try swapping 1 of the high-excitement, high-energy, super-stimulating outdoor activities for a leisurely sniff walk or a scent work game.

Most of the time when I suggest scent work or sniff walks to someone with a high-energy dog they roll their eyes at me. Or they flat-out tell me that won’t work.

But try it once. Then keep trying it a few times a week for a month. At first, your dog might not understand what you’re doing together because they’ve been conditioned to want super high-energy and high-stimulation activities.

As Stapelton-Frappel says, “Scent work releases dopamine. We need to make it available to dogs for them to be satisfied. Scent enrichment satisfies a natural drive in dogs and is beneficial for their mental health.”

So this sniff walk time is about rewiring your dog’s brain. Sniffing naturally releases feel-good hormones like dopamine.

Over time, your dog will associate this sniffing with feeling happy and satisfied. That feeling will train them to see that relaxing feels good. This is a great activity for senior dogs, too!

In addition to sniff walks as enrichment to relax high-energy dogs, there are lots of fun scent games you can play with your dog!

Simple games include the muffin tin-tennis ball puzzle that I recently demonstrated on television with my dog Lucy. We also love to do a simple scavenger hunt in the house or my backyard. That can be a fun way to give your dog their dinner!

Play Music to Help Your Dog Relax

Here’s another idea that makes high-energy pet parents roll their eyes at me! But don’t knock it till you try it!

Many studies have found that playing music can help animals, including dogs, regulate their anxiety and relax. But not all music will be relaxing for your dog.

A study called The Influence of Auditory Enrichment on Canine Health and Behavior found that animals are less stressed when exposed to classical music versus nothing. Classical music is more relaxing than any other genre.

Try turning on a relaxing Bach or Beethoven playlist on YouTube when you and your dog are at home. This is great enrichment to relax high-energy dogs! There are a ton of videos designed just for dogs! Or, turn on some music at a soft volume while you leave your dog home alone. 

I turn on a relaxing dog playlist for my dogs about once a week. I do stuff out of the house every day, but one of the important parts of enrichment is variety. So I don’t play music for them every day. I also click around to different playlists on YouTube to keep it interesting for my dogs.

If you have a high-energy dog who is bouncing off the walls, classic music won’t magically make them settle. Or if you have an anxious dog who barks every time the wind blows, this won’t magically stop the barking. BUT… if you start playing relaxing music for your dog when they start to let their guard down, this can help them feel less stressed.  

Use Meals to Give Your Dog Enrichment (and help them relax!)

There are a lot of ways to work calming enrichment activities into your dog’s life. This doesn’t have to require a lot of extra time from you!

I always recommend that pet parents do simple swaps in their routine to make dog enrichment work for their lifestyle. It’s not realistic to expect people to add on hours of work and playtime each day. So here are some simple ideas that you can try out!

The first easy enrichment swap is a slow feeder bowl. If your dog eats their meals out of a regular bowl, start using a slow feeder bowl or puzzle feeders for some of their meals.

There are a ton of food puzzles you can buy. There are also a ton of slow feeder bowls with all kinds of different grooves and compartments. You can even make it simple by adding a rubber toy to your dog’s current regular bowl.

The point of feeding your dog in this way isn’t just to make it hard for them to get their food. This is about using their mind to solve the puzzle and get to their food. As your dog solves the puzzle, they’re building their confidence and problem-solving skills.

Common Slow Feeder Bowl Mistakes

One mistake that I see when it comes to interactive feeders like this is using the same one over and over again. Dog enrichment is all about keeping things fresh and fun.

Using the same slow feeder for every meal is just as unenriching as the regular bowl you started with. So mix it up!

You can even try scatter feeding. That turns your backyard into a giant slow feeder! For scatter feeding, you toss your dog’s dry food out into the yard. You can also do this on a rug indoors if you don’t have outdoor space or if it’s too hot or cold to take your dog out.

Scatter feeding requires your dog to use their sense of smell to locate all their food. I do this occasionally and the dogs sniff around for a good 10-15 minutes!

And while it might not sound like a lot, 10 minutes of searching is a lot of work! So don’t scatter the food too far and wide. It will be too difficult. Remember, frustration is not enriching.

A tasty dinner and a boost of dopamine? You’re rewiring your dog’s brain to self-regulate and find their happy place without barking and bouncing off the walls. Sounds like great enrichment to relax high-energy dogs to me!

Lick Mats for Anxious Dogs

Lick mats are popular food-based enrichment toys. If you have a small dog – or a big lick mat! – you might even be able to use it as a slow feeder for their meals.

A lick mat is typically a rubbery silicone mat about the size of a half-sheet of paper. They have tons of grooves and shapes in the silicone so that whatever food you smear in there, your dog needs to lick it to get the snacks.

This works well with plain yogurt, peanut butter, or wet food. I also love to smash a ripe banana in our lick mats. Experiment with what your dog likes.

Lick mats can be great enrichment to relax high-energy dogs and anxious pups because licking is an instinctually calming behavior for dogs. It helps them to slow down, focus and relax. Most of the time… Be aware that for some dogs the lick mats can create more anxiety if the food is too hard to lick off of it.

I always recommend that you closely supervise any lick mat activities and take the mat away as soon as your dog gets more of the food off of it. If they start chewing and pawing at it, this could be a sign that they’re frustrated they can’t get every last morsel. And frustration is never enriching. 

Calming Enrichment Games to Help a Hyperactive Dog

Calming enrichment for your anxious or high-energy dog isn’t all about chilling out and listening to Bach. Some enrichment games encourage and reward calm and relaxed behavior, too.

One of my favorite things tools for this is the Calm Dog Games card deck. I bought this from Chloe, a canine enrichment specialist who was inspired by her high-energy Springer Spaniel, Cam, to create this deck.

I love that she brings up the popular adage, “A tired dog is a good dog.” But goes on to point out that tiredness and calmness are not the same thing. What a great point!

The games in her card deck help to balance physical energy with cognitive work. Most importantly, these games strengthen the human-animal bond you share. That’s a key element of a happy, confident, and calm pup!

The card deck is split up into different categories of enrichment activities. You can shuffle and pick from Calm, Focus, Puzzle, Play & Bond. These games work for all ages, even senior dogs.

Some of my favorite dog enrichment games from the deck are:

• Puzzle – The Muffin Game: Use a muffin tin to place treats in each compartment and cover each one with a ball. Encourage your dog to sniff and find the treats. In the deck, Chloe has a level 2 and level 3 version of this game in the Calm Dog Games deck.
• Play – Unwrap A Present: For this game, Chloe explains that you wrap your dog’s favorite ball in various layers of cloth tied closely together and encourage them to “unwrap” it. You can use cut-up old t-shirts, towels, or pieces of fleece fabric. You can also use treats in the layers to make it more enticing.
• Bond – Commando: This game is to create an obstacle course for your dog using anything on hand. Cushions, balls, hula hoops, a tree stump, or a blanket draped over the backs of two chairs would work great! If you have dog agility gear like a tunnel or dog jump, use them! Encourage your dog to jump in, over, crawl under, and stand up on all the elements. Reward them and encourage them along.
• Focus – Which Hand Game: Hold a small treat in one hand and extend both closed hands out to your dog. Use the cue “find” or “search” to encourage them to sniff and pick the hand with the treat. This game is also part of my Mental Enrichment for Dogs Activity Pack!
• Calm – Easter Egg Hunt – This is a scavenger hunt around your home. Start with one room, and without your dog seeing, hide treats or pieces of food around the room. Release them with the cue “search” or “find” and let them sniff all over the room for the goodies. Help them and give them encouragement along the way so this becomes a bonding activity.

Whether you go for the card deck or you prefer video tutorials – like in my Mental Enrichment for Dogs Activity Pack – doing these kinds of simple, at-home enrichment games make dog training fun and will help your high-energy dog use their brain power.

These games are all great ways to build confidence for nervous and anxious dogs. It’s worked well for my dog, Burt!

Incorporating Calming Activities into Your Daily Routine

Now that you have a ton of ideas, how much enrichment does your high-energy dog need to feel calm every day? The answer really depends!

As you’ve read in this post, there are a lot of different kinds of enrichment. Some games are more mentally taxing and are best in 10-15 minute sessions. While passive enrichment like listening to music can go on in the background for an hour or more.

if you want to help your high-energy or anxious dog learn how to relax and be calm, what matters is that you do something with them every day. Consistency is key for them… and for you!

I recommend that you build a routine to help yourself stay on track with enrichment for your dog. Maybe you spend 15 minutes when you get home from work doing one of the games in my Activity Pack or the Calm Dog Games deck.

Or maybe every Monday night is a scatter-feeding night. You can find a new relaxing dog playlist on YouTube every Saturday afternoon when you’re out doing something without your dog.

Enrichment to relax high-energy dogs is all about finding a routine that works for you and your lifestyle. I also recommend you try to get all the humans who live with your dog involved. Make sure everyone is on board with helping your dog learn how to relax.

Ready to try enrichment to relax high-energy dogs?

Enrichment is more than just a fun activity for your dog. It’s a key part of their well-being, helping them play, solve problems, and build confidence.

This is especially true for high-energy or anxious dogs. By incorporating these activities into your daily routine, you’re not just managing your dog’s energy but also teaching them how to relax and find calmness in their environment.

Whether your dog is pacing with anxiety or bouncing off the walls, enrichment can make a world of difference. Start small, be consistent, and watch your dog thrive.

Did you like this post? Check out more dog enrichment content:
Brain Games for Dogs
Do you know the 7 categories of enrichment for dogs?
9 Best All-Natural Dog Chews for Aggressive Chewers
What is Barn Hunt? A Scent Work Sport for Dogs!
Mental Enrichment for Dogs Activity Pack: The $19 online course

FAQs

What are the first signs of anxiety in dogs? Common signs that your dog is anxious include excessive yawning, barking, howling, whining, or sleeping a lot.

How often should I engage my dog in these calming activities? Short, frequent sessions are recommended. Start with brief, manageable play or training sessions and gradually increase complexity and duration based on your dog’s response. Set your dog up for success with this and any training. You always want to end on a high note, if you can.

Can these games replace professional help for an anxious dog? If your dog is struggling with severe behavioral issues or separation anxiety, I recommend that you talk to an expert like your veterinarian or a dog behavior specialist. They may recommend enrichment games as part of your plan.

How can I tell if my dog needs more enrichment? If your dog doing destructive behaviors like chewing up your stuff, barking incessantly, or whining, this is a sign that they probably need more enrichment. Those behaviors are signs that your dog is trying to entertain themselves and they’re not getting enough enrichment in their day-to-day life. Make sure that you mix it up and offer a variety of enrichment, not just food-based or physical exercise.

How often should I rotate my dog’s toys? I recommend putting away the majority of your dog’s enrichment toys and swapping them out once a week. This will keep things fresh and keep your dog engaged with their toys.

What are the best types of puzzles for beginners? We love Nina Ottosson puzzles. You can also DIY an enrichment puzzle for your dog with cardboard boxes. 

How do I introduce new enrichment activities to my dog? Start small and easy with any new activities for your dog. Remember that they have no clue what you’re expecting them to do, so be patient. Short, rewarding sessions of any new game or activity are best at first.

Are there specific breeds that benefit more from enrichment? All dog breeds benefit from enrichment! But enrichment is not one size fits all. Hounds might enjoy sniffing the most, while border collies might love to fetch and German shepherds might love learning new tricks. Even the laziest couch potato dogs can benefit from passive enrichment like listening to music.

What should I avoid when providing enrichment to my dog? Dog enrichment should never be frustrating. Make sure that you pay attention to your dog and if they get frustrated with an activity, you pivot to something else. Always end on a high note.

How do I know if an enrichment activity is safe for my dog? Anytime your dog is playing with an object like a puzzle, snuffle mat, toys, lick mats, etc. you should supervise them. Anything can become dangerous if it breaks or your dog gets into a sticky situation – we know that dogs can do that to themselves sometimes! Just like frustration isn’t enriching, getting hurt is not enriching! So supervise your dog and get in on the fun with them.