. . . or I’ve been working on the kongs. That’s what it feels like every morning.

Kongs come in a variety of sizes and strengths: from puppy to Xtreme, and from small to king in sizes. The different strengths are for different strength chewers. The Xtreme, for instance, is supposed to be virtually indestructable — if you have a labragator, for instance. Luckily, so far, Chester doesn’t chew that enthusiastically. The puppy and small classic kongs work fine for him.

Basically, a kong is a cylinder that is hollow in the middle, and narrow at the bottom, but wider at the top. You stuff the middle with just about anything: treats, regular dog food, cream cheese, peanut butter, etc. You can serve as is or freeze to make them last longer. The idea is that it’s going to take your dog some time to get at all that good stuff — so he doesn’t eat his meal in 2 seconds, for example.

This is very helpful, for instance, when you want your puppy to be quietly in his crate while you’re eating your dinner, or anytime you want to occupy them without exhausting yourself.

It took Chester a while to warm up to Kongs. He doesn’t, for instance, like peanut butter (which many dogs do). And at first he wanted to grab his kong, take it out of the crate & chew on it. But I just kept putting it back into his crate, and he got the idea eventually. He gets very excited at the sight of a kong, now.

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