Snuffle mats?
Dogs & cats just want to have fun
Cats and kittens at the Animal Friends shelter use their front paws to bat around little paper envelopes that once held tea bags. The crinkled bags with the residual scent of black, green or herbal tea are a favorite toy at the Ohio Township shelter.
Also popular with cats are an uncooked piece of penne or rigatoni pasta, a walnut in the shell, and a ping pong ball in a tissue box.
My personal favorite is what looks like a pile of knotted rags. The snuffle or sniffle mat is designed so dogs can use their noses to find treats hidden amid the knotted strips of cloth. Foodmotivated cats enjoy them, too.
Suzanne Denk, animal enrichment specialist at Animal Friends for the past 10 years, uses these items and others with the cats in the shelter and with her own pets.
“By popular demand” from her cat and and four dogs, snuffle mats come out at her Cranberry home every night before bed time. Cheerios and small pieces of dry kibble are some of the treats that can be hidden inside. Just a few minutes of “enrichment activities” each day can offset a lot of unhappiness and bad cat behavior, including biting, urinating and defecating outside the litter box, Ms. Denk said.
Badly behaved dogs can destroy furniture and carpets.
Enrichment reduces stress, relieves boredom, gives pets a chance to “use their mind” and provides physical exercise, Ms. Denk said. “Their lives have to be about more than eating, sleeping and pooping.”
Many people have already figured out that cats like to play in cardboard boxes and bags. Here are some more enrichment ideas for felines:
Corks, drinking straws, aluminum foil crunched up into balls, thread spools, milk jug rings, pipe cleaners twisted into corkscrews or pretzel shapes, plastic bottle caps, toilet paper tubes with fringed edges, real feathers, socks filled with catnip, a half of a plastic Easter egg with some wet cat food spread inside, and catnip tea ice cubes.
For that last one, steep catnip in hot water, strain and freeze in mini ice cube trays.
Always supervise all pets when they play with a new toy, Ms. Denk advises. And some of those cat toys — including milk jug rings, bottle caps, socks and pipe cleaners — could be hazardous around dogs that eat and swallow socks and other objects that are supposed to be inedible.
Enrichment activities need to involve people, too, “because if the toys aren’t moving, they’re just dead to cats,” Ms. Denk said. Also hide some of the toys and rotate them “to keep toys new and interesting.”
Behavior is the theme this year of Animal Friends’ annual Black Tie & Tails fundraiser on Sept. 21- 22. Shelter workers highlighted enrichment tips when they announced that Animal Planet’s “Cat Daddy,” Jackson Galaxy, will be attending.
The star of “My Cat From Hell” and his foundation have already helped 14 Animal Friends cats through his Cat Pawsitive
program. His staff did weekly internet conferences to help the staff turn bad behaviors into good behaviors. Tickets are $ 175 each for the cocktail attire event on Sept. 21. An additional donation of $ 75 gets you a meet- up with Mr. Galaxy. Tickets are $ 300 for the black- tie dinner event on Sept. 22.
Dog enrichment activities are a little different. You can hide treats in empty cereal boxes or egg cartons. When dogs are given things they are allowed to shred, they are less likely to chew shoes and items that are off- limits, experts say.
Dogs at Animal Friends play with snuffle mats made by volunteers. Victoria, Corinne and Olivia from Girl Scout Troop 55246 made the mat that Ms. Denk gave me for Pablo, 13, my cocker spaniel. Although cockers were bred to use their noses to hunt for birds, Pablo relies on his eyes to find things. For his first snuffle mat hunt, I put several Cheerios on top of the rags. He was happy to eat those, but it took him 20 minutes to find 30 hidden Cheerios using his nose. Now he is very excited when he sees the mat coming out.
Warning: All dogs should be supervised when using snuffle mats, and they’re not for every dog. Ones that rip, shred and ingest things would destroy and possibly swallow the fabric. You can buy snuffle mats online for anywhere from $ 11.99 to $ 39.95. Or you can find online instructions to do it yourself. The best instructions I saw were by Liz Palika, a dog trainer and behavior consultant in Vista, Calif., on The Honest Kitchen Blog ( https:// www. thehonestkitchen. com/ blog/ diymakeyour- dog- or- cat- a- snufflematt/)
While Pablo’s snuffle mat was made with cut- up old Tshirts, Ms. Palika uses a yard and a half of fleece sold in fabric stores. “The cheap stuff works just fine, and your pet won’t care how ugly it is,” she notes.
She cut 262 strips that were 6 or 7 inches long and 1 inch wide. They are laced through the holes of a 12- by15- inch rubber sink mat, then knotted.