The Ethics of Enrichment

I was reading this month’s DVM360 magazine’s front page article entitled “The Ethics of Enrichment” wondering the entire time, “yeah, so this is news?”  The premise of the article was that companion animals (which you and I might even call our pets) deserve more than merely the absence of pain, more than merely access to food, water and shelter, they need “enrichment.”  Now I have nothing but respect for veterinarians; most of you know that Virginia has banned me from veterinary school until I win LOTTO (which means I’m banned for life since I don’t even play LOTTO), but sometimes I wonder, “where have these doctors been the last few decades?”

I appreciate that providing pet care, such as we provide at Pet Camp, doesn’t require anywhere near the formal education that being a veterinarian requires, and maybe since our job focuses on “fun” the idea of “enrichment” seems pretty obvious. I’m glad to say that while Pet Camp may not know much about what it takes to be a veterinarian, we do seem to know a heck of a lot about “enrichment.

Let’s see how we hold up against the official “enrichment guidelines”:


Frankly, we don’t know if enrichment of dogs and cats is an ethical issue or not, we just know that it’s an essential part of providing quality pet care (whether at your home or at Pet Camp), and we’re glad to be able to say that we’re going above and beyond in providing enrichment for our campers.

Thanks for reading.

Source: dvm360, November 2017