We know you know about Kongs (don’t you wish you’d invented them?) but we’d like to remind you that when your house is full of busy activities, and you have an irregular schedule and visitors, it can cause anxiety for the pets in the home. For dogs, one great calming activity can be working on extracting delicious foods from a Kong, and it has the added benefit of keeping them busy and therefore not underfoot. Chewing is also work, so Kongs can help on days when you just don’t have time to really run the dogs around as much as you’d like.
Kongs are one of the safest chews to give a dog, as they are made from natural rubber, are too large to swallow and are a good size to hold onto with their paws. Most people only think of smearing a bit of peanut butter inside, but you can be creative with other whole food Kong fillings to make them last longer and be even more appealing. (We don’t love the ingredients in the commercial fillings). Moist foods like plain yogurt, cooked sweet potato, a little cultured cottage cheese, banana, unsweetened applesauce, canned dog food, Green Juju or other finely minced greens/veggies, part of her regular serving of kibble can be stuffed into the Kong and frozen to make them last much longer ((you can soften it first in either water, fermented raw goat’s milk, or bone broth).
Pro Tips:
– Pick out a Kong that’s big enough for your dog’s tongue to reach inside and lick out the fillings. 
– If you have a puppy, pick out a bigger one knowing they will grow into it but don’t load it all the way up with a full big Kong’s worth of food. It might be too much food. Remember that food can stimulate the need to poop for your puppy, so if you feed with a Kong in a crate, check on them before too long to take them out for a potty.
– For hard-chewing dogs, the black colored Kongs are even stronger than the red color.
By Christine Mallar
much of the wildlife that is harmed by outdoor cats every year. Between 2-4 billion birds a and 7 -20 billion small mammals are killed by cats in the U.S. alone. The introduction of cats has caused the extinction of at least 33 endemic species on islands throughout the world.
door during the daytime and spending time socializing with all of us and our customers. Unfortunately, when he was outside, he was showing us how little he had learned about car safety by laying down for a bath right in the crosswalk on our busy street, or sprawling in the middle of a parking space along the side of the building. When he’d spot someone he wanted to visit, he’d just trot right through traffic to get to them. We felt like we had to save him from inevitable trouble with cars and luckily his owner was worried too and thrilled we wanted to take him.
We committed ourselves to daily environmental enrichment for him (regular introduction of piles of paper to play in, boxes with holes of different sizes, bags, etc rotated through his play area). Being food motivated, he also enjoyed learning tricks for treats (he learned about 16 of them over time). The most important part of the puzzle was daily interactive play. Using toys to simulate the movement of prey animals that he could chase and hunt was key to keeping him satisfied as an indoor cat. The best interactive toy remains the “Da Bird” toy with its various attachments (sparkle, mouse and of course the spinning flying feathers). For really energetic catches, we’d give him a treat. For his very best most 
spectacular catch of the evening, we ran upstairs and gave him a 3/4″ piece of bony meaty raw chicken neck, which allowed him to “hunt”, “catch” and “eat a bird” in a a fairly awesome simulated way. It was truly satisfying to him. It also supercharged our play sessions, making him ultra-motivated to play every night and to run harder and faster. He knew that there was something in it for him! What we haven’t done for him yet but we aspire to is to build him some sort of catio.
dolphin that she can touch that ball on purpose to make that trainer give her another fish. Now that the intent is clear that the behavior is to touch the ball with her nose, the trainer can introduce a hand signal or word right before she touches it, which becomes the command. The trainer might suspend the ball from a rope right at water level, and ask for and whistle/reward touches to the ball. Then the ball can be raised a little at a time and the dolphin must now stretch to reach it, and then jump to reach it, etc. Targeting can also be used to teach her to touch other parts of her body to objects or even a trainer’s hand, allowing the trainer to perhaps shake a flipper (first a “trick”) and then this trick is used to slowly shape a far more difficult behavior, like allowing a vet to take blood from a vein on that flipper – all with voluntary participation from that dolphin. It removes the fear of that procedure as it’s taught gradually, and is certainly easier and much less risky for everyone involved than corralling that dolphin and herding her into some sort of restraint device that would enable them to get that blood sample forcefully, and good luck getting that done a second time! With positive reinforcement training, it became possible for trainers to get voluntary participation from the dolphins for complex behaviors like veterinary procedures, helping to greatly lower the stress for the dolphins if they needed care.
There’s a lot of cat stuff on our minds these days as we’ve recently adopted a 10 year old Himalayan cat.