When you take an animal into your care, you also take on the obligation of making their lives meaningful to them. The easiest way is through enrichment: providing them with ways to behave in a way that comes natural to them. In the case of chickens that means for example being able to dig, forage and have social interactions. For dogs, this might be sniffing/nosework, playing and working together with their human.

Are you curious to what you could add to your animals’ life? Send me an email, sign up for a course with me and Ulvens or check out my custom design dog enrichment toys. I also make enrichment toys for other species, like chickens!

Training animals and dancing have more in common than you think. There are of course the obvious relations like training heelwork to music. But did you know body language has a lot of influence in your communication? Den Gröna Fenixen and Ulvens Djurliv have designed a course where we specifically look at how you can improve the relationship and communication with your dog through improving your own body awareness: Handling course BodyWorks.

Den Gröna Fenixen has great experience in social dancing and through that build up knowledge and a host of tips and techniques to improve your relationship with your animal! No need to be able to dance before!

Everybody knows you can train dogs and horses to work for us. Den Gröna Fenixen likes to challenge that concept and turn it around: We can work for our animals. It will pay off in the long run, I promise! Teach your animal to come when you call is useful in any species, not just dogs. Every animal will need to get used to being handled, like for a health-check. And probably the most important reason to start training all types of animals: You develop a stronger mutual(!) bond and the animals and people are happier for it. Of course I only train with positive reinforcement, amongst others with so-called clicker training. The most healthy and the durable way to train.

That and more is why I started training with my chickens. As a social species they’re interested in my presence and they are very motivated to work for food. Did you know that research shows that chickens rather work for their food than just eat from a bowl? This is why it’s great to even combine enrichment with training: give them a challenge and they will love you for it. And these concepts apply to largely any species!