Love the slow feeder! We have two different kinds for one of our dogs (the other one gets the majority of his food during training right now, so it's pretty slow right there!)
There was an article in our newspaper by a local animal behaviorist in which she said that having your pet (I think she was mostly talking about dogs, but it makes sense for cats, too) have to "work"for their food makes perfect sense, and they enjoy it, since that's what they evolved to do. Not necessarily that dogs had to sit or stand or come in order to get a bowl of kibble, but that there was *work* involved, and training is work, and makes their brains do stuff, and then they get rewarded with food! Much more satisfying than just having food "appear." (I will say that having food just be there worked *great* for some of our dogs and cats; I think it depends a lot on how feeding works in your household, and whether free feeding is an option! It's not at all an option for us right now, but it has been in the past. :) )
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Date: 2014-11-11 11:09 pm (UTC)There was an article in our newspaper by a local animal behaviorist in which she said that having your pet (I think she was mostly talking about dogs, but it makes sense for cats, too) have to "work"for their food makes perfect sense, and they enjoy it, since that's what they evolved to do. Not necessarily that dogs had to sit or stand or come in order to get a bowl of kibble, but that there was *work* involved, and training is work, and makes their brains do stuff, and then they get rewarded with food! Much more satisfying than just having food "appear." (I will say that having food just be there worked *great* for some of our dogs and cats; I think it depends a lot on how feeding works in your household, and whether free feeding is an option! It's not at all an option for us right now, but it has been in the past. :) )