Kongs and other games?

[weegiemum]

Our 17 week old labradoodle is great, but in need of more stimulation - he's walked morning afternoon and evening and I'm at home with him through the day. I bought a kong and having read it on here, put peanut butter in it - he wasn't in the tiniest bit interested! Looked at the pastes you can buy specially for them but they're expensive and look really unhealthy.

So what do you put in them? At the moment he's most interested in wet cat food and guinea pig hay nuggets, but I'm not sure that either of them are a great choice . Being part lab, he's very focussed on his stomach. He's my wee shadow and I'd like him to have something to occupy his mind a bit more so i don't have to crate him very often, though he likes his crate and goes in for a sleep, when i leave the room he always follows me if the door is open - its exactly like having a toddler!

So this is a very long winded way of saying what do you put in a kong, and any ideas for other activities like this?

I know I'm not allowed to post about a puppy without a pic, but I'll have to get one from a dc when they get in from school!

[TrionicLettuce]

You could try putting some wet food in the Kong, maybe something with a different flavour to his normal food. Fish4Dogs do a range of fish based mousses which work quite well in Kongs. Zooplus are great for foods with more unusual protein sources and lots of them come in small pouches/tins which is handy when you only need a bit at a time.

Does he get any dry food? If he does you could try giving him some of his ration in a treat dispensing toy. There are loads of different ones available ranging from really simple to quite challenging. Mine love getting some of their dry food in theirs. Particular favourites here are the Kong Wobbler and Nina Ottosson Dog Pyramid. This one and this one are also good and have the advantage of being rubber rather than hard plastic so they're quieter, especially if you've got hard floors

If he's very "busy" all the time then you could also do some work on teaching him to chill out at home. Kikopup on YouTube has a good video series called Capturing Calmness which is great for that.