How to Make Your Walks More Enriching (Without Adding a Single Extra Minute)

When we think about enriching our dogs' lives, it's easy to jump straight to enrichment toys, puzzles, lick mats and activities we need to add into our day.

But one of the easiest places to add enrichment is in something most of us are already doing: the daily walk.

For me, a good walk isn't about covering as many kilometres as possible or having my dog walk perfectly beside me the entire time. It's about giving them opportunities to sniff, explore, move their body, interact with me and actually engage with their environment.

Here are some of the ways I make our walks more enriching — and the good news is, you don't need to carve out extra time to fix this. You just need to change what you're doing with the time you're already spending.

1. Switch up the route

The simplest and most effective way to boost the enrichment value of your daily walk is to switch up the routes each day.

A dog that's walked the same block a thousand times isn't receiving any new information, and information-gathering is a huge part of what makes a walk mentally tiring (in the good way).

For Winnie and I, we don't repeat the same walk in a week — I like to choose a different spot each day. You don't have to do it exactly like that; you can absolutely return to the same locations and just change the way you walk it, or step off the main trail if it's accessible.

Honestly, I get bored myself walking in the same locations over and over again. If I'm feeling that way, imagine how our dogs feel — most of their world is completely limited to where we take them. Humans get to go other places and do other things all the time, but our dogs only see our homes and the places we choose for them. That's why changing locations and exploring new environments is so important.

Sometimes we'll walk through bushland. Sometimes we're around an oval, through a park, near waterways, through a busier environment or somewhere completely new. Different environments offer different smells, sounds, surfaces and things to investigate.

Start by going onto maps and looking nearby for paths, green spaces, or anything that looks interesting, and head out and explore! You don't need to find somewhere completely new every time you head out the door. Time itself can bring novelty back to a familiar route. If you haven't visited somewhere for a week or two, different animals have passed through, new scent trails have appeared, people and dogs have come and gone, and the environment has changed. To us, it might look like the same walk, but to our dogs, there can be a whole lot of new information there. Rotating between locations gives those changes time to accumulate, rather than visiting the same route every day when only a small amount may have changed since yesterday.

Novelty is doing a lot of the enrichment work here, not distance.

I've found that switching up our walk locations has made both of us more fulfilled, and it's always my first recommendation.

2. Let them sniff and move at their own pace, on a long leash

Sniffing is probably the simplest way to make a walk more enriching.

Dogs experience an enormous amount of their environment through scent. Where we might walk past a patch of grass and see absolutely nothing interesting, our dogs can gather information about who has been there, how recently they were there and what was happening.

I give Winnie plenty of opportunities to stop and investigate smells rather than constantly asking her to keep moving. I use a long leash (8-10m) on most of our walks so Winnie isn't locked to my pace or my straight line — she can slow down, detour, and actually process the environment in a way that's natural to her instead of being towed through it.

That doesn't mean she gets to drag me to every smell she finds. There are still rules around leash pressure, and pulling isn't how she gains access to something she wants. If she reaches the end of the leash, she'll stop and usually check in with me before I give her the okay to continue towards it on a loose leash. At the same time, I'm paying attention to her too — where possible, I'll move with her and give her the leash she needs to follow a scent trail without creating tension in the first place.

This is the part that's easy to skip when you're short on time, but it's often the most valuable part for a dog's nervous system.

This is also where I think it's important to recognise who the walk is actually for. It's completely okay to have walks that are more for us — maybe it's walking to grab a coffee on a shorter leash, where there's less freedom to sniff and explore. But as long as we're also providing walks that are genuinely for our dogs, that's okay. When the walk is for them, we need to put aside some of our ideas about what a walk should look like in terms of our desires. That might mean covering less distance, stopping constantly, following a scent trail in the "wrong" direction or spending ten minutes investigating one patch of grass. Their fulfilment becomes the priority, not our idea of a "good" walk.

3. Leave the path on purpose

Nature strips, the edge near a creek, the scrubby bit past the mown grass — I'll intentionally step off the path into these spots. It's a small thing, but it opens up a completely different set of smells, textures, and things to investigate than the path itself ever will.

4. Run a snuffle session in a grass patch

A few minutes of letting your dog nose through grass is one of the easiest ways to add some extra enrichment to a walk. Scatter a handful of treats through a safe patch of grass and let them use their nose to find each piece. Rather than pointing the food out or helping them, give them time to work through the area themselves.

You can make it as easy or challenging as your dog needs by changing the size of the search area, the length of the grass or how widely you scatter the food. It's a simple way to encourage sustained sniffing and independent searching, and requires almost no extra equipment — just part of their meal or a handful of treats in your treat pouch.

For dogs with lower food drive or dogs new to the game, start with shorter grass and a smaller search area so the food is easier to find. And for dogs who are easily distracted by the environment, you can also reinforce the act of snuffling itself. While they're actively searching with their nose down, occasionally drop a higher-value treat into the search area. This rewards them for staying engaged in the activity and can help build more value for searching over time.

5. Hide toys for "sniffy fetch"

Sniffy fetch combines the excitement of retrieving with a scent search. Instead of throwing the toy somewhere obvious, throw it into grass where it becomes partially hidden and let your dog use their nose to track it down. We love our Foam Fetch Balls for this game!

Start easy: Put your dog in a sit-stay or down-stay — or use a collar hold if they don't have a reliable stay yet — and let them watch you throw the toy into shorter grass. Release them once it lands. They know roughly where it went, but still have to sniff to pinpoint exactly where it is. As they get better, use longer grass, increase the search area or throw the toy further away.

To make it harder: Have your dog wait somewhere they can't see what you're doing, then hide or throw the toy before releasing them to search. Without seeing where it landed, they have far less visual information to rely on and need to use their nose to find it.

It's a really simple way to turn a game of fetch into something that engages both the chase and retrieve they love and their natural searching and scenting abilities.

If you want a toy that's great for sniffy fetch, our Foam Fetch Ball is EVA durafoam, floats, and comes in a 2-pack so there's always a backup in the car.

Foam Fetch Ball (2 Pack)

EVA durafoam, floats, and non-toxic — great for sniffy fetch and scent games in longer grass.

Shop Foam Fetch Ball — from $23.99

6. Build confidence through the environment

Every walk, I look for small ways to get Winnie physically interacting with what's around her — hopping onto a low rock, post or bench, stepping over a log, ducking under a branch, putting her front paws onto something sturdy or balancing on an uneven surface.

These little challenges are great for proprioception — your dog's awareness of where their body and limbs are in space. Moving over, under, around and onto different objects asks them to think about where they're placing their feet, shift their weight, balance and coordinate their body in ways that walking along a flat path simply doesn't.

Different textures and surfaces add another layer. Sand, rocks, gravel, grass, timber, water, mud and other safe surfaces all feel and move differently underneath their feet. Giving dogs positive experiences navigating that variety can help them become more physically adaptable and comfortable when the ground underneath them isn't perfectly predictable.

I don't force Winnie onto something she's unsure about. I'll encourage and reinforce curiosity and exploration and make challenges achievable, then let her work out how to use her body to complete it. Successfully navigating lots of little novel challenges can help build a dog that's more willing to investigate, problem-solve and try unfamiliar things.

None of this requires dedicated equipment or a separate training session. Once you start looking for opportunities, the environment basically becomes its own little confidence and body-awareness course.

7. Build in 5–15 minutes of structured, high-intensity play

At some stage in the walk, I'll stop and engage Winnie in a short, high-intensity structured play session with plenty of fetch and tug — but I don't just throw, tug and repeat. I thread obedience into it: a sit, a down, wraps around different objects, then the throw or tug as the reward. Fetch and tug also challenge her body in different ways — fetch involves acceleration, running and deceleration, while tug brings in more pulling, bracing and resistance. Mixing the two gives us more variety in how she uses her body, while adding obedience gets her thinking and responding to cues even when she's highly aroused. We use our Active Rings or Toss 'n' Train Tug Balls for high-intensity play.

Active Ring (2 Pack)

Light, floating and versatile — great for tugging, running and swimming during structured high-intensity play.

Shop Active Ring — from $29.99

Toss 'n' Train Tug Ball

EVA durafoam with a high-strength rope — built for tugging, fetch and swimming during play sessions.

Shop Toss 'n' Train Tug Ball — from $16.99

Your walk doesn't need to look like mine

Most days, we're doing some combination of the above. But every dog is different.

What Winnie finds enriching won't necessarily be what another dog enjoys. One dog might absolutely love sniffing every blade of grass. Another might live for playing tug with their person or sprinting through bushland, while another is happiest wandering down a busy street and engaging in plenty of social interactions.

Enrichment is about giving our dogs appropriate opportunities to engage in behaviours that matter to them.

I hope this post gives you some simple, actionable ideas to try to incorporate into your routine.

You don't necessarily need to find more hours in the day or buy another enrichment toy. Sometimes you can take something you're already doing every day and simply give your dog a little more freedom to sniff, explore, play, think and interact with you.