Different types of activity toys can promote different types of behaviours.  Just remember this will vary a little by individual – if your particular dog finds licking frustrating because they can’t get the last bit out, then it won’t be relaxing! And some toys can be used for multiple outcomes. This is a general guide for most dogs.

RELAX with things to lick and chew and activities to sniff and forage.

Categories to use: licking; chewing; foraging or sniffing.

These are all natural and highly rewarding activities for dogs which help with relaxation and decompression from stress as well as meeting daily ‘dog needs’. They provide some very gentle exercise and movement and can be easily adapted for all life-stages, health conditions and emotional states. Foraging and sniffing is about searching for hidden food. It includes activities which get noses on the floor (or up in the air) and promote gentle mooching and manipulating of objects to find the food within – and sometimes there might be a bit of problem solving involved too.

EXERCISE with toys that need quite active movement to get them to dispense the food or treats!

Categories to use: active exercise

All activities involve stretching and flexing (even licking!) but these toys encourage greater physical exertion and moving around. They typically dispense dry food and treats in response to being boshed around with noses or paws (depending on your dog’s preference).

USE THAT BRAIN with toys that encourage problem solving and more careful dexterity to access the rewards!

Categories to use: problem solving

These toys are a bit more tricky to work out, they might need your dog to move the toy in a very specific way, or you can set them up so things have to be moved or pulled first in order to access the reward inside. These toys help build problem solving skills and resilience and help boost emotions and mood state when your dog succeeds – think how good you feel when you work something out and get it right! It’s another lovely way to add pennies to your dog’s jar and some dogs really thrive on this.

In each of the categories there are some activities which can eventually be done alone and some which are designed to be done more with you there to help and support.

We strongly recommend you supervise dogs with ALL activity toys to start with, until you are confident that they can use them properly and safely (e.g. only chew what should be chewed!). Some dogs also need a bit of support and encouragement to start with and may even need to be rewarded for ‘giving it a go’. But activity toys are also an important way of keeping your dog occupied when you need to get on with other things.

So we have two categories to help you: ‘FOR DOING ALONE’ or ‘FOR DOING TOGETHER’

The ‘for doing alone’ category contains the toys we find most dogs can do without supervision once they have been tested a few times, but it does of course depend on your individual dog. Please make sure they are not going to chew and swallow things which are not supposed to be chewed and swallowed!

The toys classed as ‘for doing together’ are often just that bit harder to do properly or simply much more fun with a supporting human!

Left to their own devices, your dog may use them inappropriately (simply tipping them over rather than working calmly and methodically), or they may become frustrated without some support and encouragement. Or it may be they succeed but without using the skills the toy is intended to help develop. It may even need you to place or hide the toy, or help the dog get into the toy once they have located and retrieved it.  Some dogs do enjoy some of these activities safely on their own, but for most dogs they are better with you there to participate as well (which is fun for both of you!)

There is no single way of categorising activity toys and some of it does depend on your dog! Do they prefer to use paws or noses to approach new objects? How confident are they with noises and movement? Do they prefer licking or chewing or rummaging?

So the level of difficulty is often geared to your dog’s individual motivations, both in terms of the activity itself and also the value of what you put in it. 

Over the years we have seen some clear trends in what most dogs tend to find easy, a bit more tricky and really quite hard and have used this knowledge to form the guide below. Please also remember that choosing the right size is important and that difficulty can often be increased by how you set up the activity and whether or not you make it interactive and add extra ‘challenges’ for your dog to focus on! Some toys appear in more than one collection for that reason!

​And it isn’t just about making it as hard as possible. Too difficult and your dog will become frustrated and you risk them losing interest or, worse, it becoming a negative exercise for them. Start easy and build your way up together! 

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EASY: Great for getting started, fairly easy to manipulate to access the food

Medium: These toys need a bit more dexterity and co-ordination

Hard: Need significant dexterity and/or some problem solving skills!

Struggling? There are notes in the description of each toy or just get in touch with us, we’re here to help. 

Some activity toys are designed to work with dry food (like kibble, air dried or semi-moist, non-sticky treats, or biscuity textures) and some with more sticky textures (like wet food, whether cooked or raw). Some toys can be used with either. 

This makes it really easy for you to use some of your dog’s usual food in the toys (rather than always adding lots of treats – although we recommend you always pop a few ‘surprise’ goodies in there too as it helps motivation). 

BUT please note the type of food will change the nature of the activity.

IMPORTANT NOTE: we don’t recommend feeding all of your dog’s food via activity toys that require a lot of work to get to the food (imagine if someone did that to your tea?!). Some dogs do prefer to work for food rather than just have it available, but it should always be a choice, and a dog who is too hungry will not get the same enjoyment and pleasure from the activity. So, absolutely do use these toys for some of your dog’s food allowance, but if it is a meal-time, offer half the food in a way that makes it really easy to access (which could be something like a PAW feeder, it doesn’t have to be a bowl), and then the other half via something a little harder if you want to and your dog enjoys it.

Category: For drier food and treats

Best for kibble, biscuits and other dry treats. Some semi-moist treats are fine (or air-dried meat treats), just nothing sticky! These toys typically need to be physically manipulated to make the food come out.

Category: For softer or wet food and treats

These need stickier foods that dogs need to work to remove by licking and chewing (rather than dry foods which simply fall out). Don’t forget you can use soaked biscuits, or sometimes mix dry biscuits into something sticky like goat’s yoghurt – it depends a bit on the toy (lickimats have different filling requirements to activity feeders or kongs!)

It’s why we make food choice the last step – prioritise what you want your dog to experience first, then level of difficulty and only then think about restricting food types.

It’s great to be able to use your dog’s usual food for activities, but why not also use activity toys as an opportunity to introduce something new in order to give your dog a more enriching experience? 

So if your dog usually eats just dry food, why not have some wet food (with similar ingredients if you like) to use in licking and chewing activities. Similarly, if your dog usually only eats wet food (perhaps on a raw diet), why not find something dry and crunchy to use a dry food foraging or exercise activity. There are lots of suitable dried treats on the market – even freeze dried raw food works! 

Remember wet food can also be your usual dry food soaked in some water or even a bit of home made stock (no salt or onions please!) – but if you use kibble, you’ll probably need to mush it in a blender after soaking as kibble swells and goes spongy. Cold pressed  and freeze dried don’t tend to do this and are easier to use). We have lots of suggestions in the food, treats and chews section, with advice about texture! 

We have picked out our favourites specifically for these dogs. These are the toys which have stood the test of highly enthusiastic and determined dogs! Whilst no toy is completely indestructible (no matter what manufacturers might claim!), these stand up to some pretty robust use. Select ‘super durable activity toys’

Just remember that toys need to be sized appropriately and used correctly (for example if a toy is for bashing around to make the biscuits fall out, or designed to be thoroughly licked, it doesn’t mean it will stand up to being chewed as that isn’t what it is designed for!). Similarly if a toy is marked super durable in the puppy category – it isn’t going to be super durable for an adult! 

And for the true power chewers and big, strong breeds we have picked out our ‘toughest of the tough’ range which you can also select in the filter. 

BUT just because your dog is a power chewer, it doesn’t mean they will do that with all toys and it is really important to also incorporate activities which help encourage other, calmer approaches like licking, more gentle manipulation of objects to get the reward (not just brute force!) – but where we say that these are suitable for doing alone for most dogs, you will need to supervise more carefully to start with until they learn how to use them. Working on calmer, quieter, non-strength activities is actually one of the most important things we do with some of our powerful breed clients as it helps build a whole range of fantastic skills.