Muddy Walks Are Important
How many senses do you think are being stimulated on a walk in the mud? And why is this so important? Read on to find out more about sensory integration and how it can affect our dogs.
The protagonist of the video at the bottom of this paragraph, Layka, is enjoying her walk a lot. And many other dogs do, too. But it is not only fun to play around in the mud like this. It can be a very important part of dogs' sensory life if we allow them to experience the world through all their senses.
The information that senses send to the brain needs to be processed. This brain work is what makes the brain develop and function properly from our early years, while we grow and mature.
The five senses that we mostly talk about are vision, touch, taste, hearing and smell. These five senses give us information about what is happening in the world around us.
Two very important ones that get less mention are proprioception and the vestibular sense. These two senses tell us about the place our body is at in space and about the movements the body makes. There is even an eighth one, the visceral sense, that tells us about what’s happening inside our body.
There is no reason to believe that this doesn’t apply to dogs as their basic brain structures are the same as humans'.
All the input from the senses is processed and then combined with other types of sensory information to achieve a more accurate understanding of everything that happens around us. Let's take a closer look.
VISION:
Layka is seeing many things. The water moving, all the foliage, the mud. Processing all these different items is only a part of everything that is happening around her. Everything that she sees combined with information mainly derived from her joints and muscles from the vestibular system will give sense to her understanding of the situation.
SOUND:
Layka is hearing all the different animals in the forest, the water running and maybe even her carer breathing. Combining this information with the input from the vestibular system and also the receptors from the skin will give more understanding to the message.
Digging in the mud provides a lot of sensory information from many senses
TASTE:
Layka can taste the flavours of the muddy water. The tongue can differentiate the composition of the water and determine if what she is tasing poses a risk to her health. And also decide if she enjoys that taste or not.
SMELL:
Surely Layka can smell all the different particles in that water. And all the smells from the vegetation around her. But also, whatever the air carries. Smells can create memories and will influence our preferences. Certain smells can have a strong effect, like that from the mother that means safety or our favourite food.
TOUCH:
Touch is a huge system, in fact its input into the entire sensory machine is paramount for the good working of the brain. The skin has many receptors that can sense pressure, pain, heat and cold, the texture of things and even the movement of the hair that grows on it. Layka can definitely sense many of these things while she plays with the mud. The temperature of it, its texture, and she is able to determine how much pressure to apply so she can dig and have an impact on it.
PROPIOCEPTION (movement and position):
Layka is very aware of her body as she enters the hole investigating
Flexion, extension, traction, and compression of all the muscles and joints will give information that the brain can process and tell Layka where her body is. But it is not necessary that Layka moves to get proprioceptive information. Standing still will also send this type of information to the brain. This sense is helping Layka move, it is helping her decide how much to extend or contract her legs to dig on the mud. Where she has to place her legs and how much force to exert with them. All of it without any consciousness thought.
VESTIBULAR (gravity, head movement and balance):
The inner ear is a very complex structure that not only helps us hear but also has two types of receptors that deal with gravity and balance. They help Layka determine where she is, whether she is moving or not and at what speed.
All this information is especially important to Layka in this situation. She will probably be sliding in the slippery mud, and she will need to be able to remain stable and know exactly at what speed to dig and move so she doesn’t end up neck high in mud. Although she would probably love that!
The information from ALL the senses is what gives meaning to the events that we experience. All the senses work in layers and as the senses develop in a coordinated manner during our earlier years, each of the layers is completed to achieve a working sensory brain.
The incomplete development of any layer will impact the next ones and cause potential issues in the processing of some sensory information. This in turn can impact the capacity of an individual to learn and behave in a normal way.
Allowing our dogs to experience this type of activity is not only beneficial but necessary so that they can develop fully, and they learn from all these experiences in the way they are supposed to. And as Jean Ayres puts it in the book we mention below, “sometimes it may seem that when a child plays, she learns nothing, but the truth is … she is learning to learn”. If the basic brain structures of the dog and the human are the same, we can easily change child for dog and the sentence remains as true. Experiences like this are helping our dogs develop their brains in ways that are very important for our daily lives together: for coping in different situations, learning new skills and even overcoming behavioural issues they may be facing. Yes, muddy walks are definitely important.
To learn more about this fascinating topic you can read the book “Sensory Integration and the Child; understanding hidden sensory challenges” by Jean Ayres. This book was used as a reference for this article.
