My foster dog Henry usually goes to work with me. But, I was off today and also had a few appointments away from the house, so he spent most of the day at home sleeping. This evening, we went for a nice walk. However, when we got back home, Henry still had plenty of energy!
I usually make Henry “work” for his food. Using mealtime as enrichment provides additional physical exercise and mental stimulation for Henry. He normally eats all of his kibble out of an IQ Treat Ball.
So, I took his kibble, divided it into half a dozen piles and then stuffed each pile into a toilet tissue roll and squished in the edges so the food would not come out. The toilet tissues rolls then got crammed into an egg carton. Finally, I used several zip ties to close the egg carton quite tightly.
Then, I gave the egg carton to Henry.
I have never put Henry’s food in an egg carton before, so he was not quite sure what to do with it at first. In all, it took him a bit over an hour to eat about a cup of food. The picture above is from the very end of this adventure, when Henry has gotten almost all of the food out of the egg carton and was searching for the last few pieces.
Henry spent part of the time figuring out how to hold onto the egg carton and manipulate it so that he could tear it apart. If I do this again with him, I think he will be able to do this faster as he gets better at it. But, for tonight, this was quite a nice challenge for him.
Henry is now curled up on the couch asleep. That was some hard work for this little dog!
I think I’ll try this with Sophie. But I wonder if she’ll just stare at it and me, hoping I’ll help her out. She tends to just use her tongue to get her kibble out of anything. 🙂
If you give it a try, let me know how it goes!
This is definitely one where you could start out with “easier” versions, and then work up to the version I used with Henry.
So, start with kibble loose in an egg carton without a zip tie, then kibble in an egg carton with a zip tie around it.
Meanwhile, you could give her toilet tissue rolls with kibble stuffed in them.
Then, later, start combining the pieces together.
Just see if you can start at a level where she will be successful and will be able to figure out the puzzle. 🙂
cheers,
Mary
That was an interesting idea. Glad to see Henry mastered it.
Love the ingenuity zip ties haha
I use zip ties a lot when I am making enrichment items for my rats! Otherwise, they are able to figure out the puzzle much too quickly. 🙂
cheers,
Mary
Sorry to have come back only to be critical.
But I don’t think that this is at all a good idea.
All I can see is it teaching the dog to scrounge in the rubbish for food. you are likely to end up with a dog that up-ends the kitchen tidy, the pantry, or anything else left lying around. (Not to mention the neighbour’s garbage bins 🙁
As a ‘bad housekeeper’ I like to know that if I leave the pack of dog/cat/people food where the dogs can access that it will be left alone. So far I have not been disappointed — though the dogs DO think that any food left in the cats’ bowls is fair game if I cannot see them 🙁 Not to mention that the cats have learned to feed themselves from the dog food pack when my DH left it open where they could reach it 🙂
Hi Jenny,
This is something that works great for me and my animals. If you don’t think it would work well for yours, then you certainly do not have to try it!
Although I haven’t given this exact puzzle to Henry before, I’ve given him similar toys and have not seen any increase in “bad” behavior because of it. What I’ve seen, in fact, is the opposite. Puzzle such as this provide great mental stimulation, so he spends less time being bored and, thus, spends less time getting into trouble and inventing his own fun.
cheers,
Mary