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Things Your Dog Will Love: Twist ‘n Treat

The Twist ‘n Treat is a great positive reinforcement tool to control speed eating in dogs as well as to keep them cognitively challenged.

We want to keep our furry friends cognitively exercised, and a variety of different puzzle toys will keep them on their toes.

The Twist ‘n Treat is very similar in concept to the Atomic Treat Ball. It is a puzzle toy filled with food and it’s up to the dog to figure out how to manipulate it to get the food out.

While the Atomic Treat Ball is our go-to puzzle toy to slow down speed eating (or to just keep one of our dogs busy), if it’s the only puzzle we give them it’s going to become less and less stimulating over time. In short, the name of the game is to not allow them to get bored.

It might seem as if both puzzles are exactly the same. However, the Twist ‘n Treat is much easier to learn and is usually the best first puzzle toy, especially for puppies.

The Atomic Treat Ball and the Twist ‘n Treat work differently enough that it keeps our dogs on their toes. We need to remember that canine cognition does not generalize well and that the two wildly different shapes of the toys essentially makes them two completely different skill sets for the dog.

Shaped like a flying saucer, the twist in Twist ‘n Treat refers to the rubber screw inside the toy that you twist to open in order to load the kibble or treats.

While the loading is more complicated than the Atomic Treat Ball, the fact that you can customize the size of the gap that dispenses the food means you have a lot more options in terms of what you can put in it and it makes for a great starter toy since you can make it easy at first then more difficult as your dog gets the hang of it.

While the Twist ‘n Treat is all upside for dogs, the thick rubber it’s made from tends to bounce pretty well and the shape causes it to roll – so don’t be surprised to find yourself hunting for it underneath furniture.

As with so many of the puzzle toys out there, the Twist ‘n Treat is not meant to be left alone with your dog – especially if they are a hard chewer.

Those minor quibbles aside, the Twist ‘n Treat is a really nice addition to your dog’s positive reinforcement cognitive toy box. And for those of you whose dogs have not quite mastered other puzzle toys, this is a good learner-toy.

Things Your Dog Will Love: Thundershirt

The Thundershirt isn’t a dog toy but it is something they’ll love you even more for if they suffer from anxiety or other phobic behaviors.

The Thundershirt isn’t a dog toy.

It’s not something that dispenses yummy treats.

It isn’t even something that you’d think that your dog would like, but if they experience anxiety from storms, company coming, or crazy human holidays your dog will absolutely love the Thundershirt.

What the Thundershirt is, essentially, is a body wrap that helps the dog become less reactive to anxiety-causing stimuli using deep touch pressure.

Research done in the latter half of the Twentieth Century by Dr. Temple Grandin, amongst others, demonstrated that deep touch pressure had significant positive benefits for individuals on the autism spectrum and those with ADHD. Dr. Grandin’s background with autism inspired her initial research with animals and it was discovered that they can receive the same positive results as seen in humans.

I initially began using the Thundershirt in my own home because Porthos, our black lab-mix, can display episodes of high anxiety related to his OCD, blood sugar fluctuations related to his diabetes, and stress from his other diseases. I also witnessed how well it worked after I suggested that we begin using Thundershirts at ARF, an animal shelter were I consult in Beacon, New York. While we did see similarly positive results in the even more chaotic and reactive atmosphere of a shelter we also saw some Thundershirt eating (more on that below).

So, why would you want a Thundershirt for your own dog?

Well, you wouldn’t if you don’t live in a place that has thunderstorms, high winds, holidays with fireworks, holidays with kids in spooky costumes knocking on your door at night, hunters in the woods behind your house shooting guns, etc. I think you get my point.

The Thundershirt is a great tool to add to our positive reinforcement training bag of tricks and it fills all my personal criteria:

It more often than not does what they say it can do – there’s a definite improvement in reactivity when dogs are wearing it. It is recommended that they first be acclimated to it by having them wear it when they are doing something they love – like taking treats, playing ball, or tug. This allows positive associations along with the physical benefits of the snugness and will help prevent them eating the Thundershirt.
It’s reasonably priced.
I always prefer to exhaust the non-pharmaceutical options available to combat anxiety in dogs before referring owners to a specialist for medical intervention.

One suggestion we have come across – especially in the shelter setting – is to remember that even for kids on the spectrum this kind of pressure has a limited time of effectiveness. Therefore remember that your dog’s Thundershirt will probably only be effective for an hour or so at a time. Simply remove it, give your dog something great to do, and a little while later it can be put back on them.

I find the Thundershirt to be a really good investment for anxious dogs and I think you will, too.

(Please note: if your dog has high anxiety please see a behaviorist before trying things out on your own.)

Things Your Dog Will Love: Atomic Treat Ball

The Atomic Treat Ball is a great positive reinforcement tool to control speed eating in dogs as well as to keep them cognitively challenged.

Dogs and other canids are natural problem solvers: you can see it when wolves hunt, when the dogs in our Nose Work classes are tracking down the scent target, or when our own dogs are rooting for that single piece of kibble that fell behind their food bowls.

It’s what they’re wired to do, what they evolved to do, and it’s what they love to do, but the normal life of a dog living in a house doesn’t make for too many riddles to solve – except for the one we don’t want them to solve like how to open the garbage can lid, how to get into the closet, etc.

That’s where the Atomic Treat Ball comes in and why I’ve been using and recommending it to clients for years.

What initially drew me to the Atomic Treat Ball was Porthos had developed problems related to speed eating and I needed to find a way to allow him to get his full dinner in a measured, controlled way. It worked wonders to keep him from bloat and torsion, but after a while it became clear that although he loved the Atomic Treat Ball because it was filled with food he enjoyed it equally as much for the fun involved in getting the food out.

The trick behind the Atomic Treat Ball is in its design. If you take a look at the picture above you’ll see that it’s essentially shaped like four stacked hollow balls – in essence, a molecule – with a single loading hole in one of the balls. The pyramid shape allows dogs to easily roll the toy around without it going out of control under furniture and the single loading hole gives them a reasonably good chance of getting some food out with each go, but it’s an irregular enough reward schedule to neither bore them nor have them run out of kibble too quickly.

Also, unlike a lot of other puzzle toys the empty space inside the Atomic Treat Ball accommodates quite a bit of kibble or snacks. For Porthos we can actually fit about half of his kibble for each meal into his, which helps to slow down his eating greatly but is also really useful if you need to keep your dog busy for a while or if you want to give them a nice treat that will last if they need to spend extended time in their crates, playpens, taking a break from company or the fix-it person who doesn’t need your dog up their backside, etc.

The Atomic Treat Ball is cheap, easy, and – most importantly – it works. It’s a great tool to keep your dog cognitively challenged, which is as important to them as it is to humans as we grow older, and I believe that it’s an indispensable tool to have in our bag of positive reinforcement tricks.

A little D.A.P.’ll do ‘ya.

Using D.A.P. can really help in addressing common, low-level behavior issues in dogs – especially when used with positive reinforcement.

It comes up frequently during my behavioral consultations and I’ve mentioned it before here on the blog, but I can’t say enough good things about D.A.P. (Dog Appeasing Pheromone).

I won’t say that it’s the Holy Grail of resolving commonplace behavior problems but it’s no sippy cup, either.

Natural appeasing pheromones are produced by lactating females shortly after birthing a litter and give the young puppies a feeling of well-being and security when they’re near mom.

D.A.P. works by mimicking those natural pheromones and helps to give adult dogs a similar sense of calm and relaxation to what they would have felt as nursing puppies.

Many clinical trials of D.A.P. both in home and shelter situations have shown that it can help as a relaxing treatment when used in conjunction with positive reinforcement desensitizing and counter-conditioning (DS/CC). My own anecdotal experience in the field has shown the same.

It really can help and – best of all – doesn’t have any of the negative side effects seen in many anti-anxiety pharmaceuticals such as deinhibition and others.

Additionally, D.A.P. can be used in concert with many psycho-pharmaceuticals (but please double-check with your veterinary behaviorist first.)

Keep in mind that D.A.P.’s effects are not dramatic and most folks know it’s working when the collar expires and the anxious behaviors return or the diffuser runs out and they wonder why the dog is pacing again – then they check the diffuser and experience a “D’oh!” moment. It is designed to simply take the edge off gently and inconspicuously. This allows us to better do our DS/CC work with your dog.

We can simply stop without the step-downs necessary with many anti-anxiety medications.

If your dog is a re-homed dog new to your home this can help them settle in faster. If your dog is not fully comfortable with everyone in their home this can help them be a bit more at ease. And, if it doesn’t work for your dog we can simply stop without the step-downs necessary with many anti-anxiety medications.

For our part, at home we plug in the D.A.P. diffuser. Porthos is a pretty anxious dog and when he’s stressed it affects his diabetes so it is just a precaution to keep him on an even keel.

D.A.P.’s not meant to address out-of-control anxiety issues and like psycho-pharmaceuticals it needs to be used in conjunction with behavior modification. So, if you’ve got a dog that exhibits low-level, occasional fears and anxiety related issues you might want to give a D.A.P. diffuser or D.A.P. collar more than just a look while you are contacting a behavioral professional.

Thunder! Thunder! Thundershirts, ho!

Thundershirts are a great tool for managing stress – and they’re now available in the Boo-tique!

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we’ve just added Thundershirts to the shop.

In case you haven’t ever heard of them, Thundershirts are a great drug-free way to address anxiety, fearfulness, reactivity and over-stimulation when dogs are confronted with noise, separation and other stressors. They employ many of the same principles that are seen in TTouch and use gentle, constant pressure to help the dog regain their focus and composure.

Here’s a link to the Thundershirt website where you can find a whole mess of veterinarian and trainer endorsements.

Sometimes drugs are the way to go when dealing with behavioral issues, but having drug-free avenues to explore first can end up being better for you and your dog in the long run.

P.S. Lawrence insisted on the Thundercats reference. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t get it – he had to explain it to me, too.