The Rubber Toy That Bought Me a Quiet Evening

The first thing I bought after I brought Biscuit home was a KONG Classic, and I will give you the honest reason: I wanted twenty-five quiet minutes. Not a trained dog. Not a ribbon from a class. Twenty-five minutes where nobody in the house was barking.

Biscuit came from the shelter at fourteen months old, already sixty-two pounds and already set in his opinions. He pulled me down the sidewalk like a sled dog. He greeted guests by jumping on them. And every afternoon around one o'clock, when the mail truck came up our street, he lost his mind at the front window. I drove a school bus for a living before I retired, so I know what noise sounds like. That dog could still get to me.

I tried what people tell you to try. I closed the blinds. I said quiet in a calm voice about four hundred times. I bought a puzzle feeder, and Biscuit solved it in ninety seconds and then stood over it looking at me like I was slow. I went back to the KONG.

The first one I stuffed, I did the simple version. Kibble in the hollow, a spoon of xylitol-free peanut butter to seal the opening, then the whole thing in the freezer overnight. The next afternoon I set it on the kitchen floor and sat down in a chair to watch. Biscuit worked at it for twenty-five minutes without coming up for air. Then he walked to his bed and slept until supper.

Ray came in from the garage and asked what had happened. I said nothing had happened. That was the point. It was the quietest half hour our house had seen in months, and it cost me a spoon of peanut butter and one minute at the sink.

For the first month I handed it over at random times and got random results. The change came when I made it a routine: same hour, same spot on the kitchen floor, every day. Dogs are better at clocks than we are. Biscuit started parking himself near the refrigerator around noon, which told me the routine had landed.

The mail truck still comes at one o'clock. The difference is that now Biscuit is flat on the rug with his nose in a frozen KONG when it does.

What It Handles, and What It Does Not

I stuff mine at the kitchen sink after supper. Kibble first, a spoon of peanut butter, then a few more pieces pressed into the opening so it does not all fall out in one lump. It goes in the freezer beside the ice cube tray and it is ready by morning. When Ray and I leave the house, Biscuit gets one. When the mail truck is due, he gets one.

The rubber has some give to it. He has chewed on it daily for over two years now and it has not split or come apart. When he knocks it off the back step it bounces in a direction neither of us predicts, and he finds that more interesting than the toy itself.

Here is what it does not do. It did not stop him pulling on the leash. I ended up in a front-clip harness for that, and it took about six weeks before walks were calm. It did not teach him to come when called either. That took a fifteen-foot long line and about five months of practice at the greenway. The KONG is not a trainer. It is a job for a dog who needs one at a particular hour of the day.

And it is not a treatment for real separation anxiety. If your dog is panicking when you leave, clawing at the door, working himself into a state, that is a conversation with your vet, not a trip to the pet store. I asked Dr. Sellers about it early on and she was plain with me. A stuffed toy settles a bored dog. It does not settle a frightened one.

If you are weighing it against a puzzle feeder, the difference is this. A puzzle feeder is a five-minute problem to solve. A frozen KONG is a twenty-five minute job to work at. At one o'clock in the afternoon, my dog needed the second kind.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to get the Large and skip the smaller sizes. A sixty-two pound dog will make short work of anything less, and then you have a piece of rubber on your rug and a dog looking at you for the next one. I would tell you to freeze it. A room temperature KONG is gone in four minutes and you will be right back where you started, wondering why people carry on about these things.

One more thing: get two. One sits in the freezer while the other is being worked on, and you are never caught stuffing a toy at the last minute while the mail truck is already at the corner.

And I would tell you not to expect it to raise your dog for you. It will not. It is a rubber toy with a hollow middle. What it gives you is a stretch of quiet to think in, and a job that suits your dog, and after two years and four months I still reach for it most afternoons. In a house with a dog who hears the mail truck before I do, that is not a small thing.