Food, Glorious Food

Hint: It’s in the presentation

Mackenzie’s Animal Sanctuary devised many clever, easy ways to turn food, even basic kibble, into stimulating experiences for their dogs to enjoy in their kennels.

By presenting food in many different ways throughout the week, Mackenzie’s is able to use food to provide multiple sources of stimulation:

• Taste and smell
• Oral, tactile, and mental stimulation
  

This variety of food experiences is particularly good for dogs with food-guarding tendencies. Having an abundance and variety of food experiences throughout the day helps reduce these dogs’ impulse to protect their food by decreasing the “value” of food. “Mouthy” dogs who really enjoy a good chew also benefit.

Mackenzie’s offers each food enrichment below at least twice a week. They use their enrichment schedule (.doc) to keep track of what the dogs receive.

Materials

• Brown paper lunch bags
• Cardboard tubes from paper towel and toilet paper rolls
• Plain copier paper, plain newsprint, or other plain, crisp paper
• Kongs^® and other treat-dispenser toys
• Dry kibble
• Raw hides
• Food to stuff in Kongs: canned dog food, peanut butter, cottage cheese, yogurt, low-residue foods (for dogs that can’t have the others)

Note: Save the really good stuff, such as hot dogs, chunks of cheese, “cookies,” and other high-value foods, to use only in training and behavior modification. You want these treats to retain their high value as incentives for desired behaviors.

People

Volunteers can prepare these interesting food dispensers so that they are ready to distribute by the staff who feed the dogs. Rick Wiersum of Mackenzie’s estimates that a volunteer can prepare the day’s dispensers for their 75 to 80 dogs in about an hour. You’ll need another hour or so of a volunteer’s time for cleaning any of the reusable food dispensers, such as the Kongs.

What to Do

Meals in bags or Kongs:

• Place each dog’s normal quantity of kibble in a paper lunch bag and then roll down the bag to close it.
• Fill a Kong with a meal-size portion of kibble for each dog.

Treats in paper and cardboard tubes:

• Tuck a few pieces of kibble into a piece of paper and then scrunch up the paper around the kibble. (Mackenzie’s refers to these treats as “scrunchies.”)
• Place some kibble inside cardboard tubes. You can flatten or fold the ends of the tubes to increase the challenge of extracting the kibble.

Treats in Kongs:

• Fill Kongs with various interesting foods that dogs will have to work to remove.
• You may also want to freeze the stuffed Kongs so that the treats inside them take longer to remove.

Experiment with other simple treats, such as:

• Frozen cubes of diluted broth
• Kibbles frozen in ice cubes
• Rope/chew toys (natural fibers only) soaked in broth and then frozen
• Fresh, crunchy fruits and vegetables, such as carrots, wedges of apple (cored), and cucumbers

Check out Mighty Mouths canine enrichment for more simple, inexpensive ideas for presenting food, especially for dogs who really love to chew.

Plan to vary both the presentation and the foods throughout the week. For example, Mackenzie’s dogs receive kibble meals in bags twice a week and kibble meals in Kongs twice a week, with meals in bowls on the other days. The other treats are varied throughout the week.

Monitor how the dogs respond to different foods and presentations to fine-tune your offerings. Mackenzie’s dogs were unimpressed by applesauce Kongs, so these were replaced with Kongs stuffed with canned dog food, which is much more popular.

Be alert to the needs of dogs who cannot eat certain foods or who don’t enjoy the food or its presentation. Choose substitutes for these dogs, and note their preferences on your enrichment schedule.

You can view a sample enrichment schedule (.doc) from Mackenzie’s that lists meals and treats and notes requirements for individual dogs.

Photo courtesy of Mackenzie’s Animal Sanctuary