Kong Stuffing Mania

Toys & Ingredients

 Tails wagging from Texas! We have stuff to....stuff!

When we want to preoccupy the dogs, food stuffing treats like Kongs are perfect. We've been using Kongs and other food stuffers for years. Today it's time to restock the freezer.

I used to stuff Kongs with lots of peanut butter, dog treats and "people food" stuffing recipes. However, our dogs are extremely food motivated and I found it cheaper, easier and just as rewarding to fill them with a mix of canned dog food, pumpkin and dry dog food. As an added bonus, our dogs don't get the runs from this mix. In this batch, I used the chicken recipe of Blue Buffalo's new Wolf Creek Stew wet food. The dry food our dogs are currently on is Nutro grain free chicken and chickpeas. I gathered up all our empty stuffable toys, washed them, and got to work.

Everything mixed together

After years of Kong stuffing, we've picked up a few tricks to make things go smoothly. The entire process is messy, so throw down some newspaper and get your station prepped.

Prop your Kongs upside-down to make your life easier.

When we stuff our actual kongs, we use yogurt cups and flip the kongs upside-down. A small layer of kibble in the bottom holds everything in. I freeze our Kongs to make them last longer, and to keep things clean I put the Kongs in the freezer inside of these yogurt cups. If you don't happen to eat yogurt or save cups, any drinking glass should work!

Ready for the freezer

We have lots of other stuffable toys too! I put all of these on a plastic plate before stuffing. The plate helps hold the stuffing in place and keeps things clean, and I just transfer the whole plate into the freezer. Tomorrow when the food mix is frozen solid, I will move the stuffed toys to freezer bags to keep them fresh and organized. In this batch I had some extra food left over so I added it to yogurt cups with some water. These will make a nice ice cube treat for the pups now that temperatures are rising.

Keeps puppy occupied!

Of course, always ensure the toys you buy are appropriate for your dogs. The sterilized bones we use are a good example - these are made of beef femur and extremely tough. A dog that attempts to chew through the bone can easily chip a tooth! However, our dogs only lick the filling out and ignore the toy itself, making them an appropriate choice for our pack. The bones and Kongs we use are mostly 2-3 years old and have held up to countless stuffing-freezing-chewing cycles, making Kong stuffing an efficient and affordable way to keep our dogs busy!