Kyjen Dog Games Puzzle Kibble Drop

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List Price: $14.99
Sale Price: $6.99
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I recently got this Kyjen Kibble Drop puzzle toy for our two dogs. We have a 65 lb German Shepherd Dog and a 60 lb Golden Retriever. Both have been learning "nosework" so I thought this would be a fun toy to add to our scenting games. I plan to use it by dropping one yummy treat at a time and having them find and get it from one of the 4 cups.

I'll give you my conclusion first, and then you can decide if you want to read the details below for more info (including size of the toy info).

SUMMARY:

I don't see how this toy could just be put on the ground and left for your dog to get the food out of the cups. Unless you have a very small dog, your dog's attempts will just move the toy around on the floor. For larger dogs (like ours) the toy is way too lightweight and the flaps over the cups are too low to the ground for effective "nosing the flap" technique. In addition, any dog who couldn't nose the flap effectively would need to use her mouth -and would naturally pick the arm up in her mouth in an attempt to get at the treats in the cup thereby dumping all of the treats out of the other cups (hey problem solved!!!). So, that means to play with this, you'd have to be there to hold the toy down/in-place while your dog does the puzzle and gets the treats.

I think this toy would work best (maybe) for a small dog. Kyjen needs to make a heavier and larger sized version for medium or larger dogs.

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.... Now, the details ....

First, let me give you some sizing basics about this toy, so you can see if it will be a match for your dog's size. I measured the toy and it's 10" wide. The top of the drop-in treat hole chamber is 4" high. Each arm sticks out almost 4" from the middle dispenser. Each treat cup at the end of the arm is about 2"x2" when you lift the flap. If you look at the very end of the arm, where the flap shuts, the height of the flap edge from the ground is under 1". The arms of the toy obviously slope upwards from the end, so I am talking about the very end of the arm. This is an extremely lightweight plastic toy, weighing in at just 6.2 oz.

Whew, now that all the stats are out of the way... how is the actual puzzle toy?

Initially, I had all the flaps open and just put a treat in an open cup so they could "find" it. They didn't have to open the flaps during that phase. The 2x2" cup size is just adequate enough for them to get the treat out. If your dog is good at licking a treat out, this small size will work fine. If your dogs likes to mouth the treat out, and you have a larger dog, the 2x2 chamber size will likely be an issue. Our GSD was having trouble getting treats out because of this, although she eventually figured out how to cram her nose in there and use her tongue at the same time. :) I would imagine a really large dog would have to be pretty good with his tongue to get a treat out of the small cups.

An issue that appeared right away even with this simple usage was that the toy is SO lightweight it moves as soon as the dog touches it. I had to hold the toy in place or else they would just push it across the floor while trying to lick the treat out of the (flap open) cup. I think Kyjen needs to add some weight to help keep this toy from moving so easily. The bottom has little rubber non-skid feet on each arm, but they do nothing.

So... moving on to the phase where they had to open the flap to get the treat.... There is an issue here. For larger dogs, the flap is so low to the ground, that they can have trouble nosing it up. Our Golden tends to lie in front of what she "finds" when scenting. So, her head was already down on the ground level, which made it easier to work on flipping open the very-low-to-the-ground flap. Our GSD stays standing, though. So, from that angle, she couldn't really use her nose to flip the flap up (although she tried). She also used her mouth to try and open it, pawed at it, etc. I'm sure if I wasn't there to hold the toy from sliding, she would have just picked the whole thing up in her mouth -problem solved! :)

Now you can see why I wrote my summary above. From my experience, this is just the wrong size/weight toy for our dogs. I'll still use it for scent games, because I only need to drop one piece at a time in and I can hold the toy in place for this. But I am not sure how else this toy could be used unless you have a small dog.

This is a hard toy to rate because of these issues. It's a good idea, but the implementation is flawed. Which is why I rated it so low.

Hope this helps,

c-

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Good toy and Tilly loves it, but she figured it out a little more quickly than I hoped!!! I wish that it was a little tougher, but then again, maybe I just have a super smart pup over her! Still a fun way to feed her and allow her to use her brain!

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This is a good product, my dog opened the doors twice and found the treat. After the second time she just picked the toy up and turned it upside down till the treats fell out. For a small dog it might work better

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bought this to help occupy our golden retriever puppy(Lucy-11weeks)---after about 2 days she had it down to a science!! when she sees it being brought out she will run ahead and open the doors before treats are dropped--that said she will still play along but it seems more for our pleasure then hers--of course all dogs are different

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A bit smaller than i thought it would be but my dog likes it a lot. good deal for the price!