Feeding & Enrichment
A meal can be more than a bowl. What to put on a lick mat covers simple spreads, freezing and cleaning, and food enrichment for dogs adds easy ideas, from scatter feeding to a towel snuffle.
If your dog finishes dinner in seconds, see how to slow down a dog that eats too fast. Cats get their own version, built around spreading and splitting meals. These guides cover how to feed, not what to feed: for diet, portions or weight, ask your veterinarian. The lick mats and slow feeders mentioned are in lick mats and slow feeder bowls.
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How-to
How to Clean a Lick Mat Properly, Including the Grooves
A lick mat is a textured surface designed to hold food, which is exactly what makes it hard to clean. This covers rinsing before it sets, the soak that does most of the work, when the dishwasher is fine, and what frozen toppings leave behind in the pattern.
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How-to
Where to Put Cat Food and Water Bowls, and How Far From the Litter Box
Choosing the spot for your cat’s food and water: how far to keep them from the litter box, why water belongs away from the food, which rooms and corners to avoid, feeding several cats or a cat with a dog, and how to move the bowls without putting your cat off its meals.
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How-to
How to Teach a Dog to Wait for Their Food Bowl, Step by Step
Lower the bowl only while your dog stays sitting, then release them to eat. This step-by-step plan uses your dog’s own meals and covers longer waits, distractions, jumping, barking and lunging, multi-dog kitchens, and what to do if your dog guards the bowl.
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How-to
How to Stop a Dog Begging at the Table: A Mealtime Plan That Holds Up
Make the table stop paying: a no-scraps rule everyone keeps, your dog’s own dinner served as you sit down, a go-to-your-bed cue with a lick mat as the job, and a gate or tether while the habit forms.
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How-to
How to Get a Dog to Drink More Water: Bowls, Meals and Walks
Simple ways to get more water into a dog who barely drinks: cleaner bowls in better spots, soaked kibble, wet food and frozen lick mats, water on walks, whether water should stay out at night (puppies are the exception) and the signs that mean a call to your veterinarian.
