Nina Ottosson has done her research. This gal from Sweden started a dog toy company called Zoo Active Products that offers these amazing interactive dog toy puzzles:
We have played with both The Brick and The Tornado wooden dog toy puzzles. But there is also a Plastic Dog Brick if slobber is a concern!
You just place little dog treats in the holes and help teach the dog how to interact with this dog toy to get at the special treat. One of the reasons we like these dog toy puzzles is because it takes a bit of time to get at the small little treats placed in the holes or compartments – thus saving the risk of too many treats that might be unhealthy.
We’ve seen a variety of interactive dog toys but because there are several areas in these puzzles to place treats the smell continues to be enticing until all the treats are found. We can’t actually say how long it occupied our dogs when we left the Dog Tornado dog toy puzzle filled with treats and left the house one day but we do know that all the treats were gone upon our return and everyone seemed quite happy and content!
I don’t know that I would have left these tempting toys behind with the dogs unless we had worked together to solve the puzzles a few times first. Sydney might have been able to handle it alone, our Australian Shepherd who loves to show off her skills and intelligence, she is a good problem solver, but working together with our dogs has given us an additional fun way for our own interactions too.
Note that these Nina Ottosson Interactive Dog Toy Puzzles were also winners of the PupLife.com Top Ten Dog Products of the Year.
We’ve expanded to a variety of additional interactive dog toys and below shows some in plastic and rubber that you might prefer as they are washable!