

When selecting an interactive feeder or puzzle toy for a raw diet, look for something that features holes and crevices you can easily stuff the food into.
#Best dog puzzle feeder how to
If your dog eats it, you can stuff it into a toy or feeder! You just need to choose the right product, and know how to fill and clean it properly. But what if you feed your dog a raw diet? Aren’t interactive feeders and puzzle toys designed for kibble only? Not necessarily. Stuffing food into interactive feeders and puzzle toys is a wonderful way to give her brain a workout while she enjoys her daily meals. She needs daily doses of mentally challenging exercise to help keep her happy and well-adjusted. But are they okay to use with raw diets?Įxercising your dog’s mind is very important. The food hopper doesn’t have an airtight seal, so a determined pet could break in, and if you want to plug it into the wall rather than run it solely on batteries, you have to buy a separate power adapter (or the feeder model packaged with the adapter for about $14 more).Puzzle toys and interactive feeders are a great way to mentally stimulate your dog and encourage her to work for her food. Yet like all dispenser-style automatic feeders we tested, it often dispensed too much food, sometimes overshooting by ¼ cup to 1½ cups. It also comes with a stainless steel bowl, so it’s less likely to trap bacteria that could cause chin acne. It keeps semi-moist food from spoiling for longer than the competition, too. This model’s hopper holds more kibble than most, up to 24 cups, and since it's translucent, you can easily see how much is left.


It’s easy to program (although slightly more difficult than our main pick, the PetSafe 5-Meal Automatic Pet Feeder) and harder to tip over than most of the feeders we looked at. The PetSafe Healthy Pet Simply Feed Automatic Feeder is the best set-and-forget dispenser feeder we found, though it still has major drawbacks.

Kibble compatibility and dispensing accuracy: I tested how easily and accurately each model dispensed pet food of different sizes, shapes, and moisture content.Stability: I took a 10-pound bag of rice and banged it against each feeder to see if it would stay upright when attacked by a hungry pet.I also tried breaking into them myself by using my fingers and various kitchen utensils. Pet-proofing: After filling each feeder with kibble, I unleashed my cat and dog on them to see if they could easily steal kibble from the hopper or spout.Ease of use: I followed the manufacturer’s instructions to assemble and program each feeder, and I noted how intuitive each system was.
