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Unleash your Pet’s Wild Side



Food Puzzles: Unleash your Pet’s Wild Side


As seen on Good Morning America's The Pet Doctor with Marty Becker.

By: Veterinarian, Marty Becker and dog trainer, Mikkel Becker Shannon
Petconnection.com <http://Petconnection.com> 

Eating was, quite literally, an all-consuming life for the ancestors of our dogs.  Today, our dogs have this task done for them. And while it might seem an improvement to have your meals handed to you; in fact, that's the not the case. The mental and physical lives of pets suffer when their minds and bodies are idle.

But there's a modern cure for the modern dog, an easy way to make them work for a living, and be happier and healthier besides.  That cure? Food puzzles.

The wild relatives of our dogs, such as wolves and coyotes, spend nearly all of their waking hours in pursuit of food. In the wild, both brain and brawn are needed to find food, and whether scavenging or hunting, wild canids have to work to eat what they find. Nature, after all, doesn't conveniently leave it in bite-sized pieces. In the wild, “fast food” means food you'd better be quick to find, and getting it takes six steps in graduate-level hunting: prey, pursue, apprehend, kill, compete with the rest of the pack to eat, and finally consume.

For today's dogs, though, it's simply a trip to the food bowl, a kindergarten-level skill that has but a single step: consumption. Our dogs are still wired to work, but they've become permanent couch potatoes who are lucky if they get out on a couple of short walks a day. 

The result of this lifestyle change --- “being born retired” --- is often behavioral problems:  Excess barking, pulling on leash or chewing furniture when they need mind and body stimulation that we aren’t providing. Too often, these problems end up putting their lives at risk, as fed-up pet owners dump them at the shelters, where they may or may not find new homes.

And it's all so unnecessary, when you can give a dog a food puzzle to work off energy, work their brain, enrich their lives.

Food puzzles are toys designed to be filled with kibble, small treats even frozen foods to encourage the dog to work to get to the goodies.  Instead of mindlessly emptying the food bowl, the dog has to hunt to bring down the "prey," and work for a long time to eat what would have once taken a minute to do.  Eating out of food puzzles takes memory, skill and manipulation, all of which help our dogs find healthier, less-destructive ways to release pent-up energy.  

Food puzzles have as much variety as there are kinds of dogs.  There are toys designed specifically for puppies, for senior dogs, for hard chewers, for the tiniest and dogs and the most giant as well. There are even puzzles match a dog's intelligence, challenging them up to the genius level in pursuit of their dinners.  

You don't even have to use a puzzle: You can simply hide food and have your dog work to find it.  When a dog's kibble is scattered in the grass, every day is a holiday, with the fun of an Easter egg hunt

So throw away that food bowl, or at least, make an effort to make your dog work for most of what you used to put in there. With food puzzles, you unleash the wild thing, and your dog will be happier -- and so will you.

Recommended food puzzles manufacturers (listed alphabetically):

1.       Kong – www.kongcompany.com  (Kong, Kong Wobbler, Kong Genius, Ziggies)

2.       Premier – www.premier.com (Linkables, Busy Buddy line including Kibble Nibble, Tug-a-Jug, Squirrel Dude)

3.       Nina Ottosan - www.nina-ottosson.com



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