Activities
Our furry guests enjoy a holiday agenda full of entertaining activities. These include treat hunting in our Sensory Garden, freedom exploring at a private dog park, daily exploratory forest walks, brain enrichment games and an endless supply of massages, cuddles and love.
Sensory Garden
Your dog will have so much fun in our purpose-built dog Sensory Garden throughout their entire stay. A dog sensory garden is a space designed to stimulate your dogs senses: smell, touch, sight, taste and sound. It encourages your dog to use their brain to solve problems, learn, gain confidence and relax.
Our sensory garden
Our sensory garden has been designed with Cavalier King Charles Spaniels in mind. It features a relaxing hanging day bed that gently sways with the wind. It also has an array of dog-friendly plants and aromatic herbs. It boasts a number of different flooring options including various sized and shaped paving stones, pebbles, as well as bark and dirt.
During special occasions like a dog’s birthday or Halloween or Christmas we love to decorate the sensory garden to give it a different feel for our guests. We also give it a make-over each season with fresh plants and herbs so our dogs don’t get bored. We use this space to hold our Sniffari’s (treat hunts). We hide treats around the garden, then sprinkle aromatic herbs around and then encourage our furry guests to hunt for the treats.
Private Dog Park
One of our most popular activities is a visit to the private dog park. This fully fenced space is the perfect environment for your dog to run free safely. Surrounded by enormous trees it features a concrete pipe tunnel, a wooden A frame, a lounging platform, many stone blocks to relax on and lots of grass to run around on. It also has lots of dog friendly plants so your dog can safely sniff until their heart is content.
While at the dog park we like to throw tennis balls and have treat hunts. We also like to set up a cosy blanket on the grass and give our furry guests a cuddle and massage while they take in the beautiful surroundings.
Why are dog parks beneficial?
Dog parks are beneficial for dogs because it gives them a safe space to run and play freely. They’re not constrained to the size of a backyard, or their lead when on a walk. There are new smells, sights and sounds that they can enjoy.
Note: We only frequent this private dog park. We do not attend public dog parks. When at the dog park we have no less than two adults (usually three) who are employed by The Dog Cottage who are watching over our guests.
Enrichment Games
Dog enrichment involves mentally and physically stimulating activities that engage a dog's mind and body. This is achieved through activating their senses: taste, sound, touch and smell by encouraging activities that encourage dogs to engage in their natural behaviours.
We love playing enrichment games with our guests for two reasons:
They absolutely love it. Seeing them having fun and knowing it is doing them so much good is our ideal dopamine hit.
Research shows that there are many benefits including reducing stress, promoting relaxation, promoting a sense of accomplishment, reducing anxiety, strengthening bonds with people, improving resilience and preventing and treating undesirable behaviours.
We engage in the below styles of enrichment: cognitive and behavioural enrichment, environmental enrichment, feeding enrichment, musical enrichment, scent enrichment and social enrichment.
Daily Explorative Walks
Your dog will enjoy an explorative daily nature walk amongst over 14km of tracks. We have many different sniff-worthy routes to choose from. One of our guests' favourite walking tracks is through the forest at the back of our house. They can enjoy the sounds and smells of wildlife like kangaroos, geckos and many different bird species, plus much more. Visually they enjoy gazing over the calm water and watching the birds and the occasional flying fish.
Our furry guests love their daily explorative walk because it helps preserve their muscle tone and joint movement, it helps expel excess energy, it improves their cardiovascular fitness, it lowers blood pressure and decreases stress.
What if my dog doesn’t enjoy long walks?
If your dog doesn’t enjoy long walks, or cannot engage in a long walk due to age or a health issue that is absolutely fine. They can still partake in our walks from the safety of one of our dog prams.
Grooming
Everyday after our walk our furry guests enjoy a gentle and relaxing groom. We start by playing calming dog music from The Pawsome Rescues YouTube channel. This sets the mood for calm. If they haven’t already done so themselves, we will place your Cavalier up onto the faux fur on top of the sofa which is where we will gently groom them.
Grooming routine
Our grooming routine commences with a gentle eye cleanse and ear wipe. This is followed by a full body tick check. We do this to ensure no nasties have attached themselves during our walk. Next is a gentle full body brush using a soft bristle brush. We do this to slowly introduce the feeling of the brush and to loosen the hair of dogs with a longer coat. It helps us identify areas with knots that will require more attention. We then commence work on untangling any knots with our combs. Finally we give each of our furry guests a soothing massage. This usually results in the Cavalier drifting off to sleep.
Note: If our guests get up close and personal with the mud while experiencing the private dog park we will of course give them a relaxing bath. This would include a shampoo and condition using our oatmeal products.
Cuddles, Massages & Love
This part is by far the biggest perk of our job. The cuddles, massages and love is endless at The Dog Cottage.
Morning cuddles - Each of our furry guests start their day with individual cuddles and snuggles in bed. This is one of the favourite parts of our day.
More cuddles and snuggles are given before and after their grooming session.
Evening cuddles - Each day draws to a close with bedtime cuddles again. A lot of our guests enjoy drifting off to sleep while being gently stroked.
Resident Nana and Grandad - Our furry guests absolutely love the daily visit from our resident Cavalier-obsessed Nana and Grandad. They enjoy one on one cuddles and massages sometimes on the rocking chair, other times on the sofa.
We understand that some Cavalier King Charles Spaniels are not huge fans of cuddles. In which case we restrain ourselves and wait for the Cavalier to decide they feel like cuddles.