Why?
Well, there will be no more "free" meals for our pups. Dogs in general like to search for their food, they love to work and the mind stimulation is great for a healthy dog. Our normal routine in the mk9 home is to ask our dogs to sit or down before they receive their meals, but we are stepping up the game a bit. Now they will have to work for their entire meal, in a fun tasty way.
What we are about to show you works well for people on the run and don't have a lot of time to do training until their dogs entire meal is finished. This also works well for dogs that are racer eaters (gobble their food in 2 bites), dogs that like to dump their dishes or dogs that get board with their food (picky eaters).
"We can treat boredom using constructive discontent (hunger) to expend energy, and stimulate intelligent problem solving, resulting in pets that are physically healthy, smarter, and more emotionally fulfilled." - Dr Tripp
What you will need is:
-Large (or) x large size Kong Ball (black), Kong Wobbler or a feeding puzzle that your dog really loves.
The reason for these choices instead of your dogs average food bowl, is there is CHALLENGE involved.
-Next you will need your dogs food that you normally feed.
-For Kong Balls we like to add a bit of Peanut butter (optional) to the top to hold in the dog food.
Food puzzles for your pups will vary in difficulty when getting the food out, pick something that best suits your dogs personality. For example: if your pup is a bit over weight or very clever at getting the food out you may want a harder food puzzle like Canine Genius. If your pup is on the thinner side or gets easily frustrated we recommend starting with an easy puzzle or kong ball. If you like to add a bit more variety to their meal time hide the feeding puzzles around your home.
NOTE:
- If you have more then one dog in your home, make sure all dogs are separated during feeding time. We wouldn't want to set our fur kids up for failure by placing a high value item in the middle of two or more driven dogs. So, put your pups in their own crates or designate a specific room for each.
-Do you feed your dog canned/wet food?
If you do, freeze the food in the puzzles or place the feeding puzzle in a x large bowl which makes it more difficult to get the food and keeps the room cleaner. ;)
Here is a list of some of our favorite feeding puzzles.
If anyone would like to donate any of the below feeders to the mk9 rescue dogs we would be grateful.
Email mk9karen@hotmail.com for address or more details. Thanks all ;)
"Having a job to do, a challenge, a problem to solve that is within your abilities to do is what keeps us alive, aware and engaged in our lives and the same is true for our canine companions." - Dr. Marty Becker
"Having a job to do, a challenge, a problem to solve that is within your abilities to do is what keeps us alive, aware and engaged in our lives and the same is true for our canine companions." - Dr. Marty Becker
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