Enrichment Activities That Lower Canine Anxiety

By Jessica Ennis, DVM, CVA

✓ Medically reviewed by Jessica Ennis, DVM, CVA — August 17, 2026 For general education — not a substitute for veterinary care.

Behavior · August 21, 2026 · 5 min read

The verdict up front — scent work and structured chewing calm dogs faster than toy rotation, and I tell owners to start there.

A four-year-old rescue terrier mix named Pepper came into my practice because her owner was exhausted. Pepper paced the kitchen every evening around six, panted with no exertion behind it, and had started shredding the corner of the doormat. The owner had already bought a wall of puzzle toys. None of them touched the pacing. What changed things was not more stuff — it was the right kind of stuff, used in the right order.

The limitation most owners run into first: enrichment is not one thing. A flirt pole and a frozen Kong occupy a dog’s time in completely different ways, and only some of that time actually lowers arousal. Puzzle feeders and toy rotation get recommended as a blanket fix for “anxious dog,” but a lot of what gets sold as enrichment is really just exercise or distraction. Distraction can be useful. It is not the same as teaching a nervous nervous system to settle.

The myth: any activity that tires a dog out will calm it down

Owners often assume that a physically tired dog is a calm dog, so they lean on fetch, long runs, or high-arousal tug sessions to burn off anxious energy. In my experience that approach backfires almost as often as it helps. A dog that is aroused by chasing a ball for twenty minutes can come inside more keyed up, not less — the heart rate and cortisol have gone up, and nothing about that process practiced settling. Physical fatigue and nervous-system calm are not the same output, and for a genuinely anxious dog, high-arousal play can rehearse the exact vigilance pattern you’re trying to reduce.

Reading the reality: which enrichment categories actually lower arousal

Sniffing, licking, and chewing engage what behaviorists broadly describe as a parasympathetic, “rest and digest” state, while chasing and tugging lean sympathetic. That distinction is why a snuffle mat or a frozen lick mat tends to settle an anxious dog faster than a game of fetch, even though fetch burns more calories. Scent work in particular — scattering kibble in grass, hiding treats around a room — gives a dog a sustained, low-arousal task with a built-in stopping point, which matters for dogs like Pepper who don’t have an internal “off switch” once they’re wound up.

Chewing does something similar. It’s rhythmic, self-soothing, and gives an anxious dog something to do with the pacing energy that would otherwise turn into a doormat problem — and this overlaps with a topic I get asked about constantly, which I’ve covered in more detail in Is My Dog Chewing Out of Boredom or Anxiety?. Structured chew sessions, in my experience, do more for a genuinely anxious dog than a rotating shelf of squeaky toys ever does.

Where nutrition and calming support genuinely fit — and where they don’t

Enrichment changes what a dog does with its time. Some ingredients are studied for what they do to the underlying stress response, and it’s worth being precise about which is which rather than treating them interchangeably.

Chamomile has a long history in traditional herbal care for relaxation, but the science hasn’t caught up to the tradition across species — Biomedicines: a 2026 review notes that “for the remaining species, evidence is derived mainly from preclinical studies or traditional use.” That’s a fair, honest place to be: promising by tradition, thin by controlled evidence in dogs specifically.

Ashwagandha, particularly the KSM-66 extract, has firmer human data behind it. A systematic review published in Cureus “analyzed multiple RCTs and concluded that ashwagandha has a moderate positive impact on stress reduction and cognitive performance.” L-theanine sits somewhere in between — most of the calming evidence comes from tea-derived studies in people, and a 2026 review in Molecular Psychiatry found a meaningful effect in one anxiety study at 400 mg/day for 8 weeks, “except for one study on psychotic anxiety (SMD = 0.54; 400 mg/day for 8 weeks).”

None of that replaces behavior work. I tell owners to think of calming ingredients as structure/function support that may help take the edge off while the actual enrichment and training does the heavier lifting — not the other way around.

I had a client last spring with a five-year-old Cattle Dog, Otis, who paced at exactly the same time every evening, right before the owner started making dinner. We mapped it to the kitchen noise and the owner’s own shift in energy, not hunger. The fix wasn’t a new toy — it was a frozen lick mat started ten minutes before dinner prep began, timed to beat the pacing rather than react to it. Within about two weeks, the owner reported the pacing had dropped from nightly to maybe once or twice a week. One case, not a study — but it’s the kind of pattern I see often enough to trust the sequence.

The sequence I actually walk owners through

Start by identifying when the anxious behavior actually happens — most owners can name the trigger window within a day of paying attention, the way Pepper’s owner clocked six o’clock pacing. From there, front-load a low-arousal task (scent scatter, lick mat, a stuffed chew) fifteen to twenty minutes before that window, not during it; enrichment given after arousal has already climbed does far less work. Save higher-energy games like fetch or tug for a separate part of the day, ideally hours away from the anxious window, so you’re not accidentally rehearsing arousal right before the dog needs to settle. If the pattern looks more like true separation panic than restlessness, the enrichment plan changes, and it’s worth reading Boredom vs Separation Anxiety: How to Tell the Difference before assuming a snuffle mat will fix it. And if the anxious behavior shows up specifically at windows, fences, or doors, that’s a different pattern worth sorting through Barrier Frustration vs Aggression: What’s the Difference? rather than treating with general enrichment alone.

Pepper’s plan ended up simple: a frozen lick mat at 5, a ten-minute scent scatter in the backyard before that if the weather allowed, and her high-energy fetch sessions moved to late morning instead of evening. The doormat survived. More to the point, the pacing did too — it mostly stopped.

The bottom line

Not all enrichment is doing the same job. If I had to pick one category to start with for an anxious dog, it’s scent-based and chew-based activities, timed ahead of the trigger window rather than during it — the physiology backs that choice better than a shelf of interactive toys does. High-arousal play still has a place, just not right before the moment your dog needs to be calm. What would change if you moved your dog’s most exciting game to the opposite end of the day from its most anxious hour?