Food enrichment
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FunTranscript
00:00Hey guys, it's Jane Green from Tailwriters Academy. We're here at the John DiBella
00:06Dog Walk and today we are going to be talking about interactive toys, slow
00:13feeders, and what does it all mean for our dogs. I love feeding my dogs out of
00:19products like this. This is a slow feeder. I love using a snuffle mat. This is a
00:26great, great product for hiding, here we go, for hiding their dog kibble. So you
00:34pretty much can hide their kibble in all these little crevices here and your dogs
00:39would actually have to go search and find it. This is another great product.
00:44It's called a licking mat. You can pretty much put anything in this. You can
00:48put peanut butter, yogurt, canned pumpkin, anything that you want actually, anything
00:54that your dogs actually like. I have a couple other products here on the
00:59counter. I love using the wobbler. It's another great product. It looks like a
01:04regular wobbler except this one's hard and you put your dog's hard kibble in this.
01:10We're not using any type of soft food for this. I also use regular Kongs where we
01:17would stuff them. And for our dogs that either have a small muzzle or puppies, I
01:24love using the tires because they can get their little faces in there and it's
01:27not, it's not so hard for them, which could possibly distract your dog or
01:32discourage your dog, I should say, from trying to earn their food. So earning your
01:37food is actually not a bad thing. It does teach your dog to earn and get and earn and
01:46reward basically of whatever it is that you're putting in these products. I laid
01:51out a couple of things here. This is like a normal thing that I would do for my
01:55dogs. Every week I food prep for myself. I actually food prep for my dogs too. So one
02:03of the first things, my dogs actually love sweet potatoes. So instead of buying sweet
02:09potatoes on the market, I actually will get my own fresh sweet potatoes and
02:14microwave them. And you can, when they come out of the microwave, they're pretty much
02:18like a big mush. So we're going to actually put that in the bowl. I love, or I should
02:24say my dogs love, they love carrots and they love green beans. Green beans are a great,
02:28great low fat, you could use them as rewards, but it's a great low fat food that you can give
02:35your dogs. I also love using plain no fat yogurt with my dogs. Blueberries, fresh
02:44blueberries are always a great option. And then I also have my dog's food measured
02:49out for their kibble. You don't want to overfeed when you're using these. And yes,
02:54you can break them up into different meals. No one said that you had to feed your dog
02:59all at one setting. So you can sit your dog down when you are looking to get
03:06maybe a little bit of boredom out. It's a great stress reliever when your dogs are
03:11licking. And let's be honest, guys, it's just something really fun to do with your
03:17dogs. So this is, I'm going to just kind of make up one, just one slow feeder just to
03:24kind of show you what I'm talking about here. You don't have to put a ton. I do
03:29like to kind of hide the good stuff underneath. You can see I'm not really
03:35putting a lot in here. This is the yogurt that I'm using. I'm going to put a couple
03:42blueberries around. That's Diesel over there getting his hydration on, putting a
03:53little bit of string beans, couple of carrots. One thing that I did notice, some
03:59dogs don't like raw vegetables. So it's something that you want to kind of check
04:02and see. Does your dog like raw vegetables or maybe a frozen vegetable would be a
04:07better option. Diesel, who's my older guy, he's 13. He does not like raw
04:12vegetables, but he will. He actually loves string beans, frozen string beans. I do let
04:18them either come to room temperature or I'll warm them up just a little bit for
04:22him since he's an older fellow. I'm going to use my hands for this one, guys. This is
04:27the sweet potatoes. I'm going to just mush it down here in the middle. And I'm also
04:37going to put a little bit of kibble in here. Now this is one cup of kibble. It's a
04:44serving size most times for my dogs. So you want to make sure that you're
04:50definitely not putting too much kibble. This is 100% canned pumpkin. I have it in a
04:56Ziploc bag mainly because when I am filling comms, it's easier to shoot this
05:02in because it works as like a pastry bag. So I'm going to put a little bit of
05:07pumpkin in here. Striker definitely has some tummy trouble sometimes. So I like to
05:13put a decent amount of pumpkin in with at least one of his meals. So I usually just
05:18put two spoonfuls in with his meals. When you're using anything like this, like I
05:23said, it's just easier to fill. If you've ever filled a kong, you know how messy
05:28they can most definitely get. This is just kind of an easy fix. And your kong is
05:34actually already filled just by putting it in this. Yes, you can reuse your Ziploc
05:38bags just for things like this. If you want to get super creative with this too. So
05:44this is kind of what's in here. I didn't put a ton of food in this one because I'm
05:50going to make up two different two different feeders. This one's actually
05:55going to be for Striker. He doesn't have anything fatty in here like peanut butter.
06:01It doesn't sit well with his tummy. It's a lot of fat in there. So I tend to keep
06:06things pretty natural for him anyway. If you want, you can actually even add a
06:12little bit of water to this and freeze it. Yes, I said freeze it. You can put
06:17this whole thing in the freezer. It'll take your dog a lot longer to get that
06:21out. You know, sometimes they're going through meals in just a couple of minutes.
06:27You can actually slow it really down super, super slow and maybe have your dog
06:33work for that food for 20, 30, sometimes 45 minutes, if not longer, depending on what
06:40you put in here. So what I would say is try and get a little bit creative with
06:44with what you actually put in these type of things. You can also use, I like these
06:51for the summertime. These are just from the dollar store. It's basically a silicone
06:56mold for candy and a lot of times what I'll do is I'll fill these up too. This is
07:02something for the patio. This is not something that I actually have them out in
07:07my living room with just because they're a little bit messy. You can fill
07:11this with like an unsalted broth. You can put the the pumpkin or you can make like
07:18a little mixture of this up, but it's totally edible. So your dog, when they're
07:22done with it, there's no cleanup basically and it's something easy to use
07:26outside. So get creative with how you feed your dog. There's no there's no rules
07:35that say that you have to use a dog bowl. Again, all three of my dogs eat out of this
07:40for both of their meals, breakfast and for dinner. They're eating and earning
07:46their food. I always need boredom busters for my dogs for stress relieving. And in
07:53all honesty, like I said, it's just something fun for your dogs to do. We're all
07:58looking for things to do with our dogs, especially under the quarantine or in all
08:04honesty. This is a great rainy day thing to do with your dog when you need to take
08:08a little bit of that edge off of them. Give them a frozen meal. It gives them
08:12something to do. It's something fun for them to do and they're earning some really
08:17great fruit. You don't have to feed all of this stuff every single day. If you
08:23wanted to make this super content, make it a little bit more concentrated actually, you
08:28can add water to pumpkin and make it more of a watered down pumpkin puree sort of
08:33speak and put that in there along with the kibble and then a couple of different
08:38things. You know, whenever I'm buying anything extra, I bought blueberries this
08:41this week. So that's why blueberries are going in. Always test the food that you're
08:46putting in there first. Make sure that it is dog safe food. You want to make sure
08:52that you're not giving them anything that they're not supposed to have. But get
08:55creative with this and I can't wait to see what you guys come up up with. If you
08:59have any questions about any of the videos that we've posted during this dog walk, you
09:06can always reach out to us at info at tailwaggersacademy.com. Looking forward to
09:11seeing what you have going on there guys.
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