Nutrition sessions

How can we apply this to our feline friend? A good starting point is to take stock of their specific food searching skills. Dogs are known for their highly developed sense of smell, their physical vigour and their ability to strategize (when hunting, for example). Of course, not all our pets have the same skills and strengths. As our pets age, they may suffer from osteoarthritis and find certain activities painful. Keeping in mind your pet’s limitations, you can tailor its food quests and give it stimulating tasks that are within its abilities. This will allow it to display a broader range of behaviours (in technical parlance, its ethogram).

There are various options to help your pet express itself. You can choose among a range of interactive food-dispensing tools and toys. You can choose among a range of interactive food-dispensing tools and toys. Some of these require your pet to work to get at the contents, some provide mental stimulation by forcing your pet to figure out how they work, and others simply require physical effort. Your Passionimo team can guide you towards the most suitable option for your dog.

You can also create your own activities and toys! Wrap kibbles in a towel and roll it to make a burrito-like shape. Your dog will then have to use his sense of smell and figure out how to access the highly desired meal. You can also plan a treasure hunt by spreading the serving throughout the house and then guide the animal during the quest to find each bite. Your dog will get better with time so you will have to change your hiding spots and maybe stop guiding him so much.

Another way of building on mealtimes is to use them as training sessions. It is recommended that an adult animal be fed twice a day, whereas a younger animal that is still growing should be fed three times a day. You can easily schedule a five-minute training session in the morning and another in the evening, when your pet is hungry and expecting food, to teach it specific behaviours and amusing tricks. These sessions should be fun for the animal: a game in which it can earn kibbles! As in any good game, each session should finish on a high note. You can end by feeding your pet the remainder of its meal in a food-dispensing toy or by simply scattering the kibbles on the floor or, in the summer, on the lawn.

Here are some tips and hints to make your feeding sessions successful:

• In the morning, divide your pet’s daily serving into containers. This will ensure that you don’t overfeed and that the pet does not mistakenly get extra meals from other members of the household.
• The first time you give your pet the food-dispensing toy, you will need to supervise it to make sure it uses the toy appropriately.
• If possible, start by using the easiest setting on the toy. In the case of a dispenser ball, for example, make sure that the openings are at their largest setting and place the ball on top of a few pieces of kibbles. This will reward your pet the first time it uses the ball, since some kibbles will be “released”.
• Before each use, make sure that the dispenser device is undamaged. You don’t want your pet to injure itself on sharp edges.
• If you have several dogs, it is best to give each one its own dispenser and, if possible, to feed them in separate rooms to avoid resource guarding incidents.
• It isn’t enrichment if it isn’t challenging! Keep adjusting the difficulty of the settings and rotate among various toys and tools. If you keep using the same dispenser and training for the same behaviours, what started as a game will soon become boring…

Once your veterinary team has recommended a device and techniques that are tailored to your pet’s skills and needs, you will have all you need to meet its nutritional requirements and to provide it with physical and mental stimulation at mealtimes.

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