Fall Enrichment for Dogs: A Season at Nose Level

Fall doesn't simply bring in cooler weather. It rearranges the landscape.

For dogs, one of the most interesting things about fall may be that so much of the season happens at their level.

The canopy comes down

For most of the year, a huge amount of the environment lives above our dogs: leaves, acorns, twigs, pinecones, and branches remain overhead, part of the landscape but largely out of reach.

Fall changes that, delivering all those things to the ground.

Acorns collect beneath oaks. Pinecones and needles appear under conifers. Twigs, bark, leaves, and seed pods scatter across trails and yards. Things that spent the summer twenty or thirty feet above the ground are suddenly close enough for a dog to investigate.

The same trail or field can contain a completely different collection of objects in October than it did in July.

In that sense, fall does something unusual: it brings an entire layer of the landscape down to nose level.

Cooler weather opens the day back up

The landscape isn't the only thing that changes. For many dogs, their access to it changes too.

Hot summer weather can limit outdoor time, particularly during the middle of the day. Walks get shorter, running gets harder, and anything vigorous tends to happen early in the morning or after the sun goes down.

But when temperatures cool, more of the day opens up.

That might mean longer walks, more time wandering around the yard, a return to the trail, or simply being able to linger somewhere interesting without heat determining when it's time to go home.

Just as the landscape becomes more interesting, many dogs get more comfortable time to explore it. 

The squirrels come down too

Dogs who are interested in squirrels may have even more to watch in fall.

As nuts and seeds ripen, squirrels spend considerable time on the ground gathering food and caching it for later. Gray squirrels are scatter hoarders, which means they bury individual nuts in many different locations rather than storing everything in one place.

From a dog's perspective, that creates activity all over the landscape: squirrels running down tree trunks, crossing open ground, digging, burying food and returning to places they've visited before.

It also means they're leaving information behind.

The patch of earth your dog is sniffing may be somewhere a squirrel recently dug, handled food or passed through. And for dogs who prefer watching wildlife to chasing it, there is simply more behavior to observe.

Fall doesn't only rearrange plants. It changes what other animals are doing with the landscape too.

The ground gets louder

Then there are the leaves themselves.

Dry leaves give away movement that bare ground can keep quiet — a squirrel, chipmunk, bird or something much smaller moving through leaf litter.

Dogs often notice it before we do.

A rustle somewhere off the trail can be enough to make a dog stop and orient toward the sound, even when neither of you can see what caused it.

This may be one of the more overlooked changes of fall: the ground becomes more audible.

All of this makes fallen leaves an easy place for a small enrichment activity.

Five-Minute Adventure: Leaf Scatter

Find a safe patch of dry leaves and scatter a handful of your dog's food or treats through them. Then let your dog sniff them out.

The food disappears beneath an irregular layer that shifts, crunches, and carries plenty of its own smells. Your dog has to sort through all of that information to find what they're looking for.

It takes about five minutes and requires nothing more than what the season has already provided.

Choose your spot carefully and avoid areas with unknown mushrooms, debris, lawn treatments, or anything else you wouldn't want your dog investigating closely.

Look at fall from six inches off the ground

We tend to notice fall by looking up: the canopy, the color, the changing light.

Dogs give us a reason to notice what is happening below.

Go see what came down.