#86 - Q&A: Indoor Enrichment Activities Ideas

Can you believe that we're wrapping up Season 7? In this Q&A Episode, we're diving in and answering your excellent questions. In this episode, you'll hear Allie, Emily, and Ellen talk about: 

• Go to Enrichment Ideas for bad weather days 
• Cheap, apartment-friendly foraging activities 
• All things chewing 

You can find the episode show notes here.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Emily: What I love about this discussion is the– how we're modeling that our enrichment strategies aren't just about what the dog needs, but also what the human needs. And that's such an important component because it's really vital that the strategies that we're using are sustainable and enjoyable to us and make sense in the space that we live in. And it's perfectly acceptable for you to have those rules in your head.

[00:00:24] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:00:42] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:43] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

Today we have a Q&A episode. Thank you all for submitting your questions, we love to hear from you. Today we are going to talk about rainy day enrichment go-to ideas, cheap apartment friendly foraging ideas, and chewing. So much chewing. So here it is, today's episode, Q&A: Indoor Enrichment Activities Ideas.

Ellen, what's our first question for today?

[00:01:28] Ellen: Our first question for today is what are activities you default to when the weather stinks outside?

[00:01:34] Emily: All right, so I have some favorite go-to games with my dogs, but if you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you're going to know that our real answer is “it depends” because what your pets like is going to vary and what you like is going to vary and what your household facilitates is going to vary.

So these are just my favorite activities with my dogs. They're not for everybody, but I do one thing in particular that is good for both me and my doggos, and that is sock dancing. And yes, you heard me correctly. Socks, as in the things you put on your feet. And the reason I do this when the weather doesn't facilitate outside time is because one of the issues with my body is a connective tissue disorder.

And so I have to do really, really low impact exercise. So when I can't go outside to exercise, I put my socks on and I slide around our hardwood floors and our tile kitchen floors. And so it's good, low impact exercise for me, and the dogs are delighted by this. And so they start laughing and they run around me and they start playing with each other.

And so we just all get like really playful, hyped up time while I sock dance and they know the word now. So I'm like, do y'all want to go sock dancing? And they get really excited and they lead me to my socks and they're like, “Put those on because we're going dancing.” That is one of my activities that I can do with my dogs that benefits both of us together.

Conversely, when I need my dogs to do things and I need to not be part of it because I need to do something else and I need the dogs to stop asking me for entertainment, I will do a little hide and seek game around the house. So I'll put the dogs in my office and then I go all up and down the house and I hide food.

On all three levels, we have an upstairs, we have the main floor, and we have the basement. Hide food all over the house, all three floors. Open all the doors to make sure they have access to every part of the house. And then I open my office door and I say, “hide and seek!” 

And it's not really a hide and seek game. I don't know why I call it that, but I'm hiding food and they're seeking food, so that's how the game got named. That game keeps them occupied for a good 30 to 60 minutes. Where they're just going all over the house looking for food and I always hide the food on the floor because I don't want scent trails leading up to places where our food lives. So they've been able to separate if the scent trails go up to the kitchen or to our tables, it's not for them. They only get food from the scent trails that are on the ground.

So just a safety precaution. We're not teaching our dogs to start foraging in our kitchen. We don't want them to, to develop that habit. So that's my go to, like, “please go away from me right now and do other things so I don't have to babysit you” game, but then the sock dancing is my “we're all doing it together" game.

So those are my two, I think, biggest, like, indoor activities when the weather is poop. What about you, Allie?

[00:04:44] Allie: A lot of my activities are already indoor, like we do tug with Oso, and that's indoor. So a lot of our activities are already indoor. One thing that we do, because we have rainy days, we also have cold days, and then there's like, I don't feel well days, so we have just a whole lot days in which I need to do indoor things for Oso. One of the things that I do, which I've probably mentioned a few times, is we have this really long hallway in the front of our house.

And so I can either stand or just sit on the couch watching TV and chuck treats down the hallway and he goes and in the beginning he usually, like, trots or runs to them and it's super cute and then as he loses steam he just, like, plods along looking for those treats. So that's a really nice one for both physical exercise and a little bit of foraging for him.

 We'll also do just training things inside, but he's at the stage of his life that a lot of time rainy days are just snuggle days for us, and so we don't have to have wildly different rainy day strategies anymore than we do from his normal stuff, because a lot of his normal stuff is also indoors. And I think that's a really good point of when we're talking about contingency plans on this podcast or in a webinar or wherever you're, you're listening to us, it's not going to be relevant for every single person. 

So, a lot of Oso stuff is already done indoors, and so I talk about rainy day strategies all the time, and my rainy day strategy is not super different than my regular day strategy. And that might be true for you as well. When he was younger, that was very different. So just keep in mind that even though we're talking about, like, rainy day strategies of, uh, what you can do for indoor stuff with your pet, it might not look very different than what it already does.

And because we're talking about actual rainy days, Oso has developed a fear of wind in his old age. And so, depending on what kind of rainy day it is, we also have a medication protocol in place for him. If it's a windy rainy day, then we need some extra pharmaceutical help to feel comfortable.

If it's just a light drizzly day, then we don't need that. So there is something very specific weather related that I have to do on those days sometimes.

[00:07:11] Emily: I love that you brought up the, like what he needed back then and what he needs now, because it's the same thing with Brie. When she was younger and didn't have as many, like, musculoskeletal issues that we had to pay attention to, and she had a lot more energy, one of our indoor activities was wrestling. And I would do that by, I'd make claw hands and I’d kind of make snarly face and I'd go, “I'm going to get you!” and she'd immediately start laughing and throw herself on her back and I'd roll her around and grab her legs and she's pushing me away with her legs and she's growling and you know, we're, we're doing this play wrestling and it would wear her out.

If we try to do that now, she's like, “Okay, but we have to watch my back and we have to be careful about my neck.” And it's just when she wants to play it, it's very mild. So we just don't do it very often. So that's a really good example of an indoor enrichment activity that was super appropriate and necessary when she was younger, healthier, and had more energy. And now that's just not a very appropriate strategy for her given her age and her physical condition. So yeah, things change across time.

[00:08:17] Allie: Absolutely. Ellen, what about you?

[00:08:19] Ellen: We're kind of like Allie and Oso at this point because the outside world is not necessarily safe for Griffey with his allergies. And so most of our standard plan don't involve the outdoors. I mean, right now, the weather is beautiful. It's sunny and delightful. And also my deck is green from the pollen that is a direct threat to my dog.

So we do a lot of indoor things and we have our. physical rehab routine that we have from a rehab vet for both dogs. And that satiates them pretty well on the physical aspect of it. If they need something that's a little bit more high octane, then we either do tug or a modified safe fetch for whichever kiddo wants it, or they play together, and we just sit there and cheerlead and confirm that they are the bestest dogs. And obviously they're so vicious and fierce, even though they're not at all. So play between the two of them, play with one of us. We do a lot of snuggling when we're sad, because sometimes we're sad that we can't go outside.

Let them snuggle us in whatever way is safe for Griffey's back because he's kind of like Brie where, yeah, I see that you want to trust fall and you can't do that anymore. Boundary. No. That makes everybody unsafe. And because Griffey's allergies as well, we have to be cautious about what kind of dry foods we can hide.

So things like the hide and seek we used to do a lot and It's a very labor intensive activity for me now. So we do lick mats because those are very effective for my kiddos. And chewing is something that if I have any chews and because we separate the dogs for chews, nobody needs to worry about anything when they're doing a long term calming project.

[00:10:03] Emily: Awesome. So what's our next question?

[00:10:05] Ellen: Our next question is, what are some cheap apartment friendly ideas for more complex foraging opportunities?

[00:10:14] Emily: I just talked about hide and seek, but my answer again is going to be hide and seek because It's actually a really challenging game for dogs who haven't played it before, and I always recommend to people who are new to it that you don't start by hiding food around your entire house, because that can be– even if you're in an apartment, and if you have more than one room in your apartment, that can still be really tricky in terms of them locating those scents.

Especially if they're not used to finding scents in certain parts of the house. So, I always have people start with a kind of smaller area first. Make sure the dog knows the cue to start the game very well, and also knows the cue that means, “You found them all!”

Which is my way of telling them that they're done. But, once they understand the kind of, start and stop cues, and they understand the concept of, like, using their nose to find food hidden in places around whatever area they can currently handle. You can gradually expand the field. And then if you want to get real fun about it, you can start increasing the difficulty of the hide.

So instead of the food just being on the ground somewhere, maybe it's in a cup. Maybe we can graduate to an upside down bowl. Maybe we can graduate to it being inside stacked bowls. Maybe we can graduate to it being inside of a toy. So, there's lots and lots of ways to continually increase the difficulty level of the hide and seek game, which I really like because for dogs for whom it works and makes sense, for dogs who aren't like Griffey, it's just a cheap or free way to continuously hone their skills and offer them challenges and give them more difficulty to work on.

That said, it's by no means the only way to do that. So that's one of my strategies. Allie, what strategies do you like?

[00:12:06] Allie: Yeah, I'm a big fan of hide and seek, like you're describing. And that can be with food or toys or people. Like, you can track and trail a whole lot of different types of scents. It doesn't always have to be food. I'm also just a big fan of scatter feeding or find it, whatever you want to call it. Emily, I know you call it scatter feeding. I call it find it. I now call it both things because you use a different word than I do and I can't not call it find it.

[00:12:34] Emily: Well, for me, they're two different things because Find It is just when you have a few treats in the moment. And so it's like, “We're playing this game together,” toss, and then the dogs find a little bit, and they check in with you again, and then you do it again. Whereas scatter feeding is like, “Here's your entire meal. I'mma peace out, you do you,” and the dogs are on their own. So that's why I use it because to me they mean different things.

[00:12:55] Allie: Anywho, Find It, depending on Emily's definition of the two things, which to me are like, I don't know, it's the same thing, just different durations. Throwing food on the floor or in the grass and having them search for things.

Though we're talking about apartments, so we, we can negate the grass stuff. The reason that I like that so much is because humans are creatures of habit and we tend to choose the same hiding places all the time. And so if we're talking about potentially a smaller space like an apartment - and I would say my house is pretty small and there are not many hiding places in my house either - then they catch on to where the hiding spots are, and so they're not necessarily using their noses for that, depending on what you're using. 

And my example of this, every morning, we feed Oso a little bit of his breakfast and all of his supplements in a bowl, and then the rest of his food goes into a food puzzle, and I hide the food puzzle.

So we do essentially like what Emily was talking about with Hide and Seek every morning for most of his breakfast. And he knows my hiding spots. There are only so many spots that I can hide a ball that size in that isn't just in the middle of the floor and very obvious. 

And there's also, like, I have some weird rules around where I hide things.

So, for example, his bowls are in my office, and so I never hide his food puzzle in my office because he's right there. He could see me hiding it. So it never goes in the office. For some reason, it never goes in the kitchen, and very rarely in the dining room. Like, it's just, it's very– humans are weird. I don't know.

I have these rules in my head about where it goes and where it doesn't go. And Oso has caught on to where those rules are, and so a couple of years ago, one of the first times that my mom was watching Oso in this house - and she knows to, you know, hide the food puzzle in the morning and all of that - and we got back from vacation and she had hid it in the bathroom, which at that time I had never, ever, ever hidden it in the bathroom. 

Um, he came to us with a history of being afraid of taking baths and that had, you know, generalized to bathrooms. When we were in our townhouse when we first, um, adopted him, you could either go, like, down the hallway or through, uh, through a Jack and Jill bathroom, and he would never go through the bathroom with us. He would, like, follow us to that door, and then, like, backtrack and go through the hallway. He would never go in the bathroom. He still very rarely goes, goes in the bathroom here. 

And so she had hidden it there, And she was like, he couldn't find it. And I was like, well, yeah, cause I never hide it there. And so, um, and so he has learned my hiding spots very well.

That was a very long story to say that he has learned my hiding spots very well. And so one of the reasons that I like Scatter Feeding or Find It, depending on what you would like to use, is that there is that element of chaos and randomness of I'm not placing a treat anywhere, I'm just chucking them and they go wherever physics says that they are going to go.

And so I, for my guy, find that he usually does use his nose more for those activities than for others. Now, I could absolutely do what Emily was talking about of increasing the difficulty level of that Hide and Seek game. That seems like a lot of work, though, sometimes, and so oftentimes I just let physics take the reins.

[00:16:36] Emily: What I love about this discussion is the– how we're modeling that our enrichment strategies aren't just about what the dog needs, but also what the human needs. And that's such an important component because it's really vital that the strategies that we're using are sustainable and enjoyable to us and make sense in the space that we live in. And it's perfectly acceptable for you to have those rules in your head. I mean, I have rules that Brie doesn't get any food in the kitchen because she has a history of being such a proficient forager that we had to lock down our kitchen for the first year that we had her. And I don't want her to relearn that.

So I have very valid reasons for not doing the kitchen, but I have more opportunities to hide things around the house. With our– the way our layout is, it makes more sense for me than it does for you. And so this is a really beautiful example of what we're talking about. That, like, we really can't recommend any kind of blanket strategy for all people because a blanket strategy is not going to work for all people and all animals.

Right. Ellen, what about you? What's yours?

[00:17:41] Ellen: I will make sure that in the show notes, there are links to some of the things that we've talked about so one is budget friendly enrichment options. One is a spice up your scatter feeding blog post. And another one is explore variety through a cardboard box. Because like I mentioned, we have to be very careful about dust and storage mites in my house, which is so delightful. Um, and so we kind of have two that we default to when we need to increase that challenge. My partner and I have been in many rented situations with both of these kiddos, so: well versed in this.

The first one is stacking dolls of cardboard and paper, because our dogs love to shred. Yes. If we had a video version of this podcast, you would be able to see my floor, which I can't see my floor. I can only see the paper and the dissected toys that are on the ground. And so for me, I will make this box in a box, in a box, in a box, in a box, in a box, in a paper, in a box, and get really big. And then they have to shred and use their whole body to navigate through all of these different layers.

And we can even hide it if that is a good option for us, too. But because I– again, I have two dogs, I want them to have space to be able to move and not worry about bumping into one another and all of those things. I want them to be able to engage with their activity without having to pay attention to the rest of the environment. We put them in separate spaces so that they can just fully focus their attention on the thing at hand. So the box in the box in the box is my first draft.

My second draft is, I call it a foraging box. So both of my kiddos are kind of like meh about snuffle mats. Griffy learned that you can just pick it up and shake it, and why would I bother trying when I can do that? So I'll take a box that is an appropriate height for my dog so that they don't choke themselves when they're doing it and fill that with the scraps of paper that they just shredded from the thing or other balls of paper with stuff rolled up or carcasses of toys or old t shirts or old dishrags or things like that, also noting that my dogs do not ingest foreign objects. So don't do this if your dog eats foreign objects, please. But I will add complexity by layering in things that have different scents into that foraging box. So they have to pick through and say, does this, does this piece of t-shirt, old t-shirt have food in it? No, I'm going to put that to the side and muscle through all of those, those different items. And it's been a nice way to upgrade from that standard snuffle mat.

[00:20:06] Emily: I love that so much. I do want to add one that I don't do because it feels too labor intensive for me. But I have used or recommended to several clients when they're like, “Hey, we're trapped inside the house because of the weather, my dogs are climbing the walls, my kids are climbing the walls, and then the kids and the dogs are annoying each other. Please help us get out of this hellscape.”

And so this is an activity that I like to give in those situations. Because it is labor intensive, but we can give that to the kids to keep the kids busy. And then it benefits the dogs. So, what I have clients do is collect paper towel rolls and toilet paper rolls, and then the kids can build structures out of the paper towel rolls.

So we alternate between, you put food in one of the rolls and twist the ends. And then you have a whole one and you stick the twisted ones into the whole one to kind of connect them. And then if you want a corner so that you can make three dimensional shapes, or even two dimensional shapes, if you want to make shapes instead of a straight line, you make corners by just folding one of the paper towel rolls or, toilet paper rolls in half, so it has that bend in the middle and then you can continue building. I always tell clients, you know, start simple, just put a treat in an open paper towel roll and bump it so that the dog can see that when they bump it, they get the food out and then twist one end and then twist the other end and then put one inside a second one, so it's another way that they can increase the challenge over time.

But I had one family with six children. They had a dog who was very, very sensitive to, kind of, sensory processing stuff. He would get really agitated when the kids would get all riled up, and they just had so much fun with this project. And they sent me this picture of one that was, like, a full three dimensional cube. Like they'd made a full box and gave it to the dog. And he was just like, “It's Christmas!” Like he was so excited about this cube that they had made. So it's a really good strategy for kids. 

Or I mean, hey, if you like sitting there watching movies and making toys, this is totally a good strategy for you. But if you need to help enrich your children and your dogs, that's a go to strategy. 

But it's not one that I use because I don't want to sit there and make lots and lots of toys. I already spend a lot of time making my birds’ enrichment toys and my bunny's enrichment toys. I don't want to have to also make my dogs’ enrichment toys. So it's not for me, but I have seen that one be helpful for lots of families.

[00:22:45] Ellen: This reminds me of a, a coworker of mine was working in a section back when I used to work with birds and made an entire city of cardboard shreddables for a raven named Kendi. And then I just, like, walked in and I was, like, “That's so fun!” And then I realized that that was my job to clean up tomorrow. And I see Ashley at the other end, just laughing hysterically. I mean, Kendi had a great time, so I was, I couldn't be too mad about it, but like, yeah. We know what we did.

[00:23:10] Emily: That was intentional. That's delightful.

[00:23:13] Ellen: All right. And again, I will make sure that in the show notes, there are lots of resources that we have collected over foraging options. So you have a frame of reference and we have lots of reels and videos on our Instagram to show our dogs engaging with these various activities. 

Our next question is: what chewing opportunities can we use that fit under the following constraints? Number one, safe. Number two, edible. Number three, not edible, that are long lasting. And then also short term, that are safe for consumption.

[00:23:45] Emily: Let's talk about that safety component first, because there is no such thing as an item that is intrinsically 100% safe or intrinsically 100% dangerous. So all risk exists on the spectrum. And it is highly contextual based on the individual, the environment, all of the things, right?

So when we're talking about risk assessment with chewing toys, what we're going to recommend is going to really differ depending on the dog and their situation. For example, I love Himalayan Chews. I am an unapologetic corporate shill. I wish they would give me sponsorship money because I've probably been responsible for a couple Ferraris for the C-level execs of that company. I have recommended Himalayan Chews to so many people 

And also, for Brie, my own dog, she gets violently ill if she eats Himalayan Chews. They do not jive with her body. So for her, they are not a good chew– chewing option. Likewise, Copper used to love marrow bones. It was one of his favorite go-to toys. He had lots of serious dental work, several of his teeth were removed. He's an old man, he's almost 16. And now marrow bones would be really dangerous for him because he doesn't have a lot of teeth and the teeth that he has are old and fragile, so they're no longer a reasonable option for him. 

That doesn't mean that marrow bones and Himalayan chews are intrinsically dangerous. It means that for my dogs, the risk is too high. They are not safe for my individual dogs for those reasons. 

So, we have to make these assessments based on several factors, one of which is, what is the dog's physical health like? What is their dental health and jaw health like? What kind of foods are they sensitive to or do they digest well? Do they have a tendency to bite off big chunks and try to swallow big chunks, or are they really careful, thorough chewers? Do they have a tendency to swallow inedible objects, or are they really selective about only swallowing things that should be swallowed? So these are all factors, and I'm also probably not thinking about several factors. 

Allie and I worked with a shelter where they had a strict no tennis ball policy, not because tennis balls are dangerous, but because they were the perfect size to clog the drains. And the city was like, “If you clog the drains and make the city pay tax dollars to get a plumber out to your shelter one more time, we are revoking your license.” And so, they were like, “No tennis balls,” right? 

So safety also depends on the environment too. And I don't know everybody's dog and all of those factors and everybody's environment, so that's an assessment that everybody needs to make for themselves.

[00:26:41] Ellen: And I will also add what your dog super cares about because you may have a dog that, like, can handle chewing on xyz thing but this thing over here, they will end your entire bloodline over this thing. And so we need to know what the safety is for the other individuals in the household as well.

[00:26:58] Emily: Yes! And the other aspect of that is, there are some dogs who will be really careful chewers with things that they like, and then they'll try to inhale things that they love. So that's a thing to consider too, right?

[00:27:12] Allie: So, keep this discussion in mind as we're continuing to talk about chewing in the next few minutes because we may be recommending things where you're like, “Oh, that is super unsafe for my dog.” We need to add in that asterisk at the end of *for my dog*, it might be completely safe for the dog that we are talking about. So we can't do a blanket moratorium on this is unsafe. Within reason. Cooked chicken bones are unsafe, y'all. Like, we can agree on that. But of everything that we are recommending in the next few minutes when it comes to chewing, um, have been safe for either our dog or the dog that we are working with, but that does not mean that it's going to be safe for your dog.

[00:27:56] Ellen: And we also got stakeholders involved. So veterinarians, care team, for that individual dog, depending on what that individual dog's issues are, if it was nutritional, or dental, or physical or any of those things. 

So: [Topic #1] Edible!

[00:28:11] Emily: I'm just going to jump right into being a corporate chill for Himalayan Chews. I already told you that I was, and I– and hey, Himalayan Chews: if you listen to this episode, I'm just telling you I've sent a lot of customers your way. So if you want to sponsor Pet Harmony, I would not be mad at that.

But Himalayan Chews are my favorite because they– for the majority of dogs that I have worked with in the past, they take dogs a long time to work through them. When you buy the appropriate size Himalayan Chew for the size of your dog, they take a long time to work through. And then my other favorite thing about Himalayan Chews is that the end pieces, where it starts to get like, “That's almost swallow size and you might try to swallow it, and I'm real concerned about that,” you can chuck the little nubbins end of the Himalayan Chew into the microwave, and it kind of puffs up like a souffle. And then, you know, when it's cooler, you can give it back to the dog and they can safely like chew, and eat, and swallow the end piece as a little souffle.

So I really like Himalayan Chews because unlike a lot of the other kind of chew stick type of things where they get to that end piece and I want to throw it out because I don't want my dogs to choke, I get to use the entire Himalayan Chew for the dogs because that end piece is microwavable and it's safe.

So I'm just going to be out here, like, corporate shilling for Himalayan chews because I'm a big, big fan of them. And also my dog can't have them, but that's not the Himalayan Chews’ fault. So that's my favorite. It's by no means the only one, but Allie, it's your turn.

[00:29:50] Allie: I'm not a corporate shill for any of the types of chews, so I'll give a few different things that I like. Um, and Oso loves pretty much everything, and he has an iron stomach, and so I am very, very lucky that I can just try a whole lot of different things for him. I'm a really big fan of raw bones, um, and we have a fenced in backyard, and he can safely hang out in said fenced in backyard for literal hours just working on that bone and he is happy as a clam to do that. 

So sometimes we've used that as a management strategy if we have, uh, like a repair person in the house for a few hours and we're like, “Hey Oso, do you want to work on this bone instead of being in the house for a few hours?” And he's like, “A hundred percent, yes!” And he loves that. 

And like I said, he has an iron stomach, and so I don't have to worry about him eating too much of the marrow and all of that like we would with some other kiddos. His stomach is like, “I don't care about a super rich diet,” and like, truly iron stomach. It's kind of amazing. 

So I'm a big fan of raw bones just in general, um, and just like going to your, your local butcher shop or something and asking them for what they have. It does not have to be expensive. I should also say, I have a big dog, y'all. Oso is 85, 90-ish pounds. And he is– was - we'll, asterisk, we'll talk about that in a second - a power chewer, and so the cheaper the better for me.

Because, yes, Emily, I also like Himalayan Dog Chews, and they did not last long enough for Oso for the price per unit. So, we've had to get a little bit creative with him, and so raw bones do take him a very, very long time to chew. I'm also a fan of bully sticks just in general. For my guy, he could go through a 12 inch bully stick in about two minutes.

And that surprised MaryKaye one day when she and I were hanging out outside. I gave him a bully stick. He came back two minutes later. And she was like, “Oh, he just, like, left his bully stick to hang out with us,” and I was like, “No, no, he's done with his bully stick.” She's like, “Oh. Okay.” It's like, yeah. So, also, price per unit does not work super well for my kiddo for that, but it does for a lot of kiddos.

One of the things that we, uh, used quite a bit of for Oso before his dental was pig's ears because of the whole price per unit thing. Yes, it took him about 30 seconds to get through it, but in the situations that we were using them in, we just needed that 30 seconds of chewing and that was sufficient for, for the behavior changes that we were looking for and super, super cheap.

So that's what we did pre-dental primarily with him. And then every now and then, you know, we'd, we'd get him, you know, like a trachea or a tendon or something like that. You know, when, when we wanted to spoil him a little bit. I told you he's a power chewer. He loves chewing everything.

We're talking about edible. Okay. These are like, kind of edible, kind of not, I don't know what category. They're technically edible, but like, one of Osos favorite things for a while was water buffalo horn. And I loved it, too, because I've noticed for him, for chewing, that there seems to be a difference of whether he can make progress on a chew or he can't make progress on it.

So if it's really, really, really hard, like an antler, let's say, like a really big antler that doesn't have, like, the marrow left in it anymore or something like that, he kind of nopes out of that. He's just like, “It's not fun. I can't do anything to this.” Uh, versus something like a water buffalo horn, where it's keratin, and so he can kind of like flake it off and take pieces, you know, and all of that. And it's, it's totally safe. It's just keratin. 

And so he liked those, and I liked it because it was an actual longer lasting option for him. and so it fit both of our criteria. I wanted longer lasting. He wanted something that he could see progress on, for lack of a better word. I don't know what the rule is in his head per se, but the rule that I've attributed in my head to his behavior is he needs to see progress on it. 

Now that he's had his dental - and I think I mentioned this, a few, in a few episodes this season - we've had to completely go back to the drawing board as to what works for him and his new little mouth. We have tried pig's ears again, and he just like gummed it was, like, this re– I'm gonna get so gross, like, I'm sorry. But it was, like, floppy. It was, you could just, like, flap it and it was disgusting and it was so soft and squishy.

And then he– And thankfully, he's a very careful chewer. I have watched him over the years. He will not try to swallow anything that is not swallowable size. So he just gummed it until it was flappy enough that he could swallow it. And I was like, that's not, that's not an option that we should be choosing.

So, that's, that's a no go. So now we're trying these little collagen sticks, and that seems to be working well for his needs, our needs, all of the, all of the things. So that's what we're currently doing is the collagen sticks. I might try a No-Hide soon as well, but again, I, for him, I have to look at cost per unit because he, even with minus three teeth, it's either now too hard or too easy and, and we still need to keep that cost down for my power chewer.

[00:35:28] Emily: I love all of the kind of progression that you went through. And I realized when you were talking that I got so excited about Himalayan Chews I forgot to talk about what my dogs use, which is kind of a minor detail. I'm going to interject but so for my doggos, we're now down to like two favorite chews.

One is partially edible, so I don't know if it counts as edible, but it's peanut butter jars. So I give them their meds with peanut butter. So then when we have a second, empty peanut butter jar, I'll take the lids off of both and give each dog one. So the peanut butter part is edible, but the chew part is not edible because they like chewing and peeling back the, the rim of the peanut butter jar so they can access the bottom of the jar.

So it is a chew toy. It's not an edible one, but there's edible stuff inside. So maybe we can consider that edible or inedible. I don't know. But the one that is for sure edible that now, we're almost entirely relying on is CET Chews. And while in general, I am not a fan of, of rawhide chews because of the adhesive they use to put the layers of rawhide together, um, CET chews are single layer hide, so they don't have any of that adhesive that makes rawhide so dangerous and it's soaked in chlorhexidine.

And this is really, really helpful because, first of all, it's a chew that works for Copper post-dental with very few teeth left, he can still chew it. And for Brie, who needs a dental but isn't a candidate for surgery right now until we get some of her other health stuff better controlled, it is a way to help prevent her dental disease from progressing, or slowing the progress of dental disease, in the meantime.

So it's a really nice, sort of “tide us over until she can get an actual dental” treat, because of that chlorhexidine, which is an animal safe disinfectant for their mouth. So they're chewing on this rawhide, they get to eat it without me worrying about a foreign body obstruction, and the chlorhexidine helps their mouth. So, for my kiddos at this stage in their life, CET chews are the thing. 

But before that, we were really into raw bones and marrow bones before all the dental stuff happened. And that was our primary choice in our house as well. And then sometimes, for special treats, we would get them knuckle bones, or bully sticks, things like that.

But really, primarily, our household was a raw bone and marrow bone type of house, and then the– as they aged that no longer became a viable option for us. So now we are a CET Chew house. Ellen, what do you use in your household?

[00:38:07] Ellen: I'm also an unapologetic shill for Himalayan Dog Chew. They used to be located like right around the corner from the daycare I ran, and we had their products. And my dogs think their Yaky Charms are, like, incredible. So, I also love Himalayan Dog Chews. We don't do a lot of edible chews in my house. I think most of what we do to promote chewing happens to be a non-edible item with an edible inside. 

So when we do something that is edible, it might be like a fish skin. So I have taken those salmon skins and put them inside of, I don't remember what it's called, from Westpaw. It's the bone that is supposed to hold like a bully stick or something.

And we would put it in there and then Griffey would gnaw and massage it with his molars until it broke up the fish skin, because the fish skin is gone instantly. We have used real animal products of various degrees. Laika can't do high fat, so it needs to be something that is a lower fat product, but we tend to not do those anymore.

One, because my dogs don't need that kind of chewing experience and it is counterproductive to our dental goals at this stage in their life. So we tend to do mostly either non-edible objects or those, like, modified– like your peanut butter jars, like half edible. But the part that's actually getting the chewing is not the edible part. 

So we talked about [the first topic], Edible. [The next topic], Non-edible. 

In my house, it's all of the things that I already mentioned. The paper and the cardboard. Laika loves to dissect toys until she gets the squeaker out. And then she will dissect the squeaker until it's a hundred little tiny pieces. Or Griffey will sit, and we have many a video of him just gnawing on strings of Wubbas.

Because whatever experience that provides him is very regulating. It appears. So we tend to do a lot more of the non-edible chews. That being said, I guess we do do a daily dental chew, but those are in rotation based on cost and what is currently recommended by my vet and my care team. So like, I'm not going to list anything in particular there. That's always– we've gone through like four or five at this point. 

Non-edibles tend to be where we spend most of our time. And Griffey is the chewer in my house, Laika is less so. She's more of a shredder. And he, we tend to do things like Kongs or Toppls or Busy Buddies or Westpaw, where he's chewing it to get to that food.

So it's kind of that long lasting and that short term consumption too, where we see that he will use his molars to break up whatever's inside this frozen toy. And then we'll lick it a little bit to soften it and then break it up and then throw it.

[00:40:53] Emily: Yeah, for Copper, post-dental– I mean, he's always loved these toys, but since his dental he started using them as chew toys, which I find fascinating. But I don't know how to describe them - and it's multiple brands, so I, there's not, I don't know like a specific brand to recommend - but if you go to a pet store and you go to the plushy section, there'll be some toys that don't really feel plushy. They feel denser and the material is almost like a brocade material. So it's just a more dense toy. 

And we will frequently catch Copper– like, he'll lick the toy several times and then where he's licked it, he just sits there and kind of gums it. He's just like [makes gnawing noise] and he'll just do that for an hour or two and his eyes get all droopy. 

So it's like, there's something about that texture that feels really good to him now that he's like an old “toofless” man. So that's, that's his non-edible chew toy of, of choice. 

Brie’s is Kongs. They love, both of the dogs love to, like, empty out the Kongs, but then when they're empty, Copper's done with them.

Brie likes to just sit there and hold one between her paws and like gnaw on the Kong itself. And I love it because for her, she doesn't actually damage them. So it's just like an everlasting chew toy, which is delightful for me. 

I know that's not true for all dogs. I fostered a big old blockhead boy, and he was just the cutest dude, and he was also a big chewer, unsurprisingly.

And the thing that he liked to gnaw on the most were those tire toys. He would chew and chew and chew, and he would break off chunks of the tire, but it would take him a very long time to really just, fully ruin the toy. I fostered him for almost a year and I think I only had to replace the tire like two or three times in that period of time, which for being such a mega-chewer, I was really impressed by how hardy that chew toy was.

So that's my other, I don't have any dogs currently who need that toy, but that's kind of become my go-to for the really big chewers is those tire toys. There's something about the smell and the texture and the way they, the resistance that they give that a lot of the really big chewers seem to like.

[00:42:59] Ellen: That's something that I talk about with clients a lot is that texture and that mouth feel and the actual experience of chewing. And like, we can't ask them, I can't be like, “Hey, Griffey, why do you love to chew on the dangly bits of Wubbas? What about that is so satisfying to you?”

But we can look at if, especially if we have a dog that has shown us they have a need to chew, and they may have a need to chew something that is not edible. It's not about a consumption phase of chewing. It is about chewing, the act of chewing itself, we can look and see: is there a texture that we can safely provide that mimics the thing that they are chewing? So like Griffey didn't actually show us he needed to chew. I said, “I think you would like this.” I just had an inkling. And so I promoted it heavily and it turned out to be a really impressive way for him to regulate himself. But if we have a dog that is chewing dining room chairs, for example, like, can we provide something that is a similar mouth feel that is safe and is also maybe not like a $400 piece of furniture? Like, can we, back to the cost per unit conversation, can we do that?

And sometimes it's just going on to Buy Nothing, or going to the pet store, or going to a friend and being like, “Hey, you got any toys? Like, I want four or five different types of textures and types of toy,” because I did some dog test– dog toy test research in my past and one of the things that I noticed across the board that seemed really important was the maneuverability of a given toy. And so being able to know, how does my dog use their feet - they have feet? hands? feet? - to engage with this item. Do they, or don't they, do they use only their mouth? Is that really important?

If they only use their mouth and they're not very good, or maybe they are missing a front foot or something, they can't stabilize a toy, and then they might really like something that you have, we just may have to amend it. Like I had somebody that had a dog that had a hard time holding chews. And so what she did is she took a 25 pound dumbbell that she got at a garage sale and some zip ties and zip tied dog chews all over it so that they were anchored. They were slightly elevated because this was also a greyhound and needed it a little off of the ground. And the dog went to town on those chews as long as he didn't have to hold them.

[00:45:14] Emily: Yeah. And I will say that when I've had dogs in the past who were like furniture chewers, I wouldn't necessarily want to give them a wooden replacement because, you know, splinters and, and wood being inedible and all of that. Those Buffalo Horns that Allie was talking about are actually really good analogs because they have a similar texture to wood and they flake off the way that wood does.

So I have seen that, for a dog who likes wood, those horns can actually be a pretty good replacement for that. So sometimes you don't have to find an exact analog. Like, you don't have to get a one to one, apples to apples comparison, but if you pay attention to the texture, the way that they destroy it, and find something that has a similar texture and gets destroyed in a similar way, that might be enough of a similarity for that dog to really get what they want out of the experience.

Allie, what is Oso all about?

[00:46:09] Allie: Inedible things? He is a huge Nylabone fan, and specifically the, like, the really hard plastic ones. That is his favorite thing, and it has to be, like, a specific type of it. Flavor doesn't matter, but, like, the style matters.

[00:46:27] Ellen: I need to know if Oso is the kind of dog that will ignore it for the first, like, three weeks until there's enough Oso spit on it that he's suddenly like, I guess I could chew on this. Or is he an immediate, “This is my toy.”

[00:46:41] Allie: Yeah, he's kind of in between where, like, we'll give it to him and he'll sniff it and he'll kind of lick at it, but not, like, immediately settle into it. It takes him a few minutes to, like, settle in with it, but he definitely has preferences that I cannot determine for them. Like, he's so funny. We have his little toy box.

By the way, his toy box is an old Vidalia Onions crate that says “Oh so sweet!” on it. And I found it at a flea market and I was like, “Hi, how much is this?” And the guy was like, “...the crate?” And I was like, “Yes, how much is it?” He was like, “I don't know? Five dollars, ya weirdo?” I was like, “I would have given you a lot more than five dollars for this.”

So he has multiple Nylabones in his little toy crate.

He will have one on the floor, walk right past it, and then go into his toy box and like root

around and, and like, pushing some aside until he finds the one that he wants. And every now and then, he, like, takes that out and he starts chewing and he's like, “Uhn, no, that's not it.” And then, like, goes back to the toy box and gets a different one. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the difference is between those two Nyla bones. I buy the same flavor usually, they are the exact same style, they are, like, the same level of worn as far as I can tell. I cannot fathom what the difference is, but there is a very clear difference for him.

[00:48:14] Ellen: We call them the Goldilocks Moments in my house. Because Laika has– It's supposed to be a bowl of guacamole that inside came little tortilla chip stuffies and lime stuffies and there were some other ones, avocados that go in there and they're whole, so she can pull it out because she is very much, “I'm a terrier that needs to pull things out of things.” That's her jam.

But she has three or four different tortilla chips and she will go and she'll be like, “This is not the tortilla chip that I wanted,” and then she'll go to the other one and then be like, “No, maybe I'll check this one.” And then finally she finds *the tortilla chip* and it's the same thing. Like, but why though?

[00:48:50] Allie: But why though?

[00:48:52] Ellen: You were searching for that one.

[00:48:53] Emily: It's the same thing with– Copper and Brie have their own recycle bin that has all the cardboard that they can have. They will meticulously go through all the cardboard in the bin to find the one piece that is the best piece.

It's never the same. And so I'm like, what? What is it about this piece that is correct to you this time around? And tomorrow it's going to be a totally different piece that's the correct piece. I really need to know. What is going through your head right now?

[00:49:17] Allie: And, well, no, he'll do it with stuffies too. So he was a chewer of stuffies, um, but unfortunately a chewer and ingester of stuffies. Thankfully, iron stomach and very careful chewer, and so he would pass everything. But, you know, still not ideal.

And so we had to really, really limit his access to them. Only supervised, and if he got to the point where he started, like, chewing on it, then it had to, it had to go away and all of that. But since his dental, he can't do that anymore, and so he gets stuffies now, and it delights all of us. Oh, he tries, he tries very hard, and I think it is frustrating for him that he can't destroy stuff like he used to. But he's figuring it out, and so he does do that with some of his stuffies now, too, where he's like, “Not, not carrot. Snake.” And it's, it's so cute.

[00:50:13] Emily: I don't know if this counts as a chew toy, but if we're talking about stuffies, Brie's an eviscerator.

She doesn't chew on them. I mean, not surprised. Feral dog. She was an adept hunter when we adopted her. So she goes, she gets the stuffy, first she squeaks it to make sure it has a squeak toy. (If it doesn't, she's not about that life. And so she'll just, like, leave it.)

And then she eviscerates. And she does the whole head tearing motion. And then she gets out that squeaky and she just destroys it. She, like, chews it into little plastic bits. And then she walks away. It's like, she might as well be doing a mic drop. Like her body language when she walks away from that stuffed toy is like, “Yeah, I just did that. What?” Like it is– she's so proud of herself. She walks away. She doesn't care about the toy after she's eviscerated it.

[00:50:58] Ellen: Just like, “I killed it. It doesn't squeak anymore.”

[00:51:00] Emily: “I win.”

All right. what's the next bullet point? 

[00:51:02] Ellen: I think we kind of covered the other two, too, in passing. So we had Long Lasting and Short Term for consumption. And I think we covered all of those in the conversation, Edible and Non-edible, because we talked about various lengths of time, cost per unit.

The last question that we got - and we're actually not going to answer it in this episode, because we talked about it in a past episode - was what ideas do you have for digging?

And that, we'll defer you to episode 62 Q& A: Handling the Holidays, where we talk about dig pits, and Allie talks about a delightful experience she had with a family creating a dig pit for their dog. And that will also be in the show notes.

[00:51:39] Allie: And, uh, we'll make sure that we link to some of those chewies that we talked about in the show notes as well. So if you want to try any of those for your pet, uh, we'll make sure that link is there. 

Alright, this is the last episode of Season 7. Thank you all so much for being here, for being here for, it's been over two years, and that is amazing. It blows my mind that that's how long we have doing this. 

And also, I have to say, Ellen's not allowed to edit this part out. It seems like Emily and I are running this podcast show, and we thank you all so much for the very, very kind words that you have given us. We’ve gotten so much amazing feedback and had so many amazing conversations with all of you.

But there is a wizard behind the curtain that does not get enough credit for the work that she is doing on this podcast, and that is Ellen Yoakum. And so I know we say at the end, like, edited by Ellen, but y'all, she does literal magic for this podcast. And so I just want to say a very, very special thank you to Ellen for making us sound eloquent and concise and professional.

[00:52:53] Ellen: Thank you. And I appreciate you. And I am delighted by the Easter eggs that I find in these episodes.

[00:52:59] Allie: Thank you for listening. You can find us at petharmonytraining.com and @petharmonytraining on Facebook and Instagram, and also @petharmonypro on Instagram for those of you who are behavioral professionals. As always links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes and a reminder to please rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts a special thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode, our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixabay.

Thank you for listening and happy training.