Fill a Bunch of Kong Dog Toys Fast

 Do you use a lot of frozen stuffed Kong or other food toys? Are you still filling them individually? You are definitely missing out. I have an ever-changing horde of dogs these days, ranging from puppies to seniors. There is often someone on cage rest or needing some extra enrichment, so stuffed Kongs are still my first choice for frozen licky entertainment. (That reminds me, I need to make a post about why I don't use lick mats.) 

I know West Paw's Toppl toy is becoming the new food favorite for the high-end dog snob crowd, and I have a couple of those as well, but I am still Kong fan for a couple of reasons. The first is durability, the reason I own two Toppls is because West Paw is wonderful and sent me the second after one of my dogs ripped a chunk out of the first. The second reason I prefer Kongs is price, with availability coming a close third. A large classic red Kong is currently $14 retail through sites like Chewy, and can also be purchased at a lot of big stores that have a pet department including Target and Tractor Supply. A large Toppl toy cost $25 and can only be found at pet-specific stores, and I'm not even sure it can be found at very major pet retailed. Do both Petco and PetSmart currently carry them in-store? I don't actually know anymore, I now live in the middle of nowhere and Tractor Supply and Walmart are pretty much it.

Anyway, I own a ridiculous number of Kong toys of various colors and shapes, and I know that filling them can be time-consuming and obnoxious. I used to use a baby spoon to scoop filling into each one individually. I no longer have time for that. What is the fastest method to fill a bunch of food toys fast? The pastry bag method. Not only is it fast, it is also very easy, makes minimal mess, and ha zero cleanup. Ready?

1. Find a container to set all your food toy in. They need to sit upright. I use a plastic storage bin from a discount store like Pic-N-Save. But it's not Pic-N-Save anymore, is it? It's Big Lots. Metal dog bowls can also work, or tupperware, or a cardboard box. No need to get fancy. Ideally you should have freezer space to slide your entire container in, but I won't judge if you need to stick the toys into nooks and crannies among your frozen foods either. I've been there too,

2. Gather your toy fillings. I typically use some combination of canned pumpkin, Greek yogurt, canned dog food, and peanut butter. It's ok to use the canned dog food with the chunks. You want your filling to be pretty thick, so it doesn't leak out before it freezes. You can get extra fancy and add in chunkier things like green beans and other veggies if your dog will eat them. You could even puree everything together in a blender or food processor, but that makes more cleanup.

3. Get a gallon-size resealable bag, Ziploc or whatever brand, and dump all your fillings in. Seal that bad boy, and start mooshing. Squish your filling goodies together as much or as little as you like. If there is something your dog doesn't particularly like, smoosh it together a bit more to get a good mix. If they like everything, maybe mix it a bit less so it's like that swirly ice cream with the two flavors together.

4. Cut off the corner of the bag, and pipe that goodness into your dog toys like a pastry chef. When you're done, toss the bag in the trash and stick your toys in the freezer. 

Did you know that you can stick all those toys in the dishwasher to get them clean? Kong and West Paw toys and natural rubber dog toys in general are dishwasher safe. I finally have a dishwasher so I am no longer scrubbing every food toy. Between the dishwasher and the pastry bag filling method, we have food toys down to a science. Maximum efficiency.  

Let's Wash Some Dog Toys!

We had foster puppies and rain and a bunch of our toys ended up looking kind of gross. Some toys, like the Kong Wubbas, are dishwasher safe. We have no dishwasher. Instead, I throw pretty much everything into the regular clothes washer and run it through a regular clothes cycle.

Before.

After.

I used to worry about squeakers filling up with water, but everything comes out of the dryer squeaking and not gurgling, and nothing has melted yet. I use biodegradable free-and-clear detergent so my dogs don't end up with Tide-breath. Washing the toys makes them significantly less yucky, and breathes a lot of life into them. It also gets off the random fur and crud that they collect on them, and makes them feel bright and new again. Yay for clean toys!

Washing Kongs with No Dishwasher

As I always point out when sharing that a toy is dishwasher safe, not everyone has a dishwasher. My house is eighty years old and tiny, there's no dishwasher and no place to put one, so we have to hand-wash everything. This comes up a whole lot, since the standard answer to cleaning all manner of things is often "just throw it in the dishwasher". Countering this advice with "I don't have a dishwasher" gets old fast, even more so than perpetually having to inform people that I don't watch TV when they must know how I could possibly have missed that wonderful commercial everyone is talking about. It's an assumption that people with electric dishwasher don't even think about, which annoys me.

Step 1: Star with some gross dog toys.

For the benefit of those who live in dishwasherless domiciles, prefer to hand-wash their dog toys, or
find themselves needing to clean something really gross, here is how I get my dog toys clean with nothing but soap, water, and elbow grease. And scrub brushes. And vinegar. And sometimes bleach. No, actually don't bleach Kongs.

None of my dogs appear capable of cleaning out a Kong. I have mostly size large and one XL Extreme Kong, and neither Brisbane nor Ulysses can reach the very end of the inside when I stuff the toys with food. Less prissy dogs would probably chomp the thing a few times to break the goodies loose, but here they have already decided that they can't win this game. I don't tend to stuff the Kongs with anything perishable these days, but occasionally I lose my mind and decide to cram some mushy banana, baked sweet potato, or canned dog food in there.

I don't usually wash our Kongs immediately after use, and sometimes they get lost under the couch for a few days (or weeks!) and I find a mold-crusted Lovecraftian horror inside.

Step 2:Soak those things!

I have found that soaking makes everything less gross. It will disintegrate kibble and biscuits, and make horrifically decomposed meat and vegetable matter less icky and more likely to slide out. Depending on how gross the toys are, I may soak them in hot water with a healthy squirt of soap (peanut butter, dry biscuits, kibble), vinegar (rotten produce and canned food), bleach (mold!) or napalm (fish oil can go straight to hell).

The worst-case scenario at my house is a Kong or other food toy with a solid plug of horribly-spoiled stuffing packed into the small end. I get gross (and not-gross) stuff unstuck from flexible rubber toys by putting them on the floor and stomping on them a few times. This is basically what unprissy dogs do when they chomp rubber toys to get the food out.

I also bash the toys opening-down on my granite counter to work the stuffing loose. Between this and the stomping I rarely have to use tools to scoop disgusting crap out of things. I also once pounded the Biggie Bone with the smooth side of a meat tenderizer to break up a particularly stubborn wad of goo.

My arsenal.

I don't think there is any one cleaning tool that would serve all of my dog-toy-scrubbing needs, I routinely use at least three or four different brushes. Kong used to make a Classic Kong-shaped scrub brush for cleaning their toys, but the handle of mine snapped off the second time I used it. Brushes designed for cleaning assorted baby-feeding apparatus are perfect for cleaning dog toys. My baby bottle brush even came with a tiny brush that's perfect for scrubbing hard-to-reach places on stupidly-designed toys like the Starpod. The round dish-scrubber is great for getting crud and hair off the outsides of the toys, and that Christmas tree-shaped brush is awesome for cleaning tapered cavities like the ones in the Urban Stick.

My favorite thing about baby-stuff brushes is that they are intended to be replaced frequently, so they are cheap and really easy to find. My last baby brush had a suction cup on the bottom so it could be stood upright to dry.

All Kongs have a small hole in the end to prevent the toy from accidentally suctioning to the dog's face. One of the ways I de-stick food from the inside of the toy is by holding the hole against the faucet and forcing water through it. This sometimes results in water spraying all over the kitchen, but never fails to flush out the crud. This also works on the Kong Marathon, assorted Starmark toys and pretty much any toy that has more than one hole.

Sometimes a rubber toy that has been through true horror will continue to stink after all traces of its adventures have been scrubbed away. I employ various methods to remove the smell depending on the toy and what I have on hand. Normally I use environmentally-friendly biodegradable dish soap, but sometimes I break out the blue original Dawn when I need weapons-grade detergent. Smelly toys can be soaked in diluted vinegar, or even straight vinegar, though this may just make them smell like vinegar instead. Depending on the smell, this can be an improvement. I've soaked all sorts of things in bleach solution, with enough rinsing and plenty time I believe the bleach will neutralize itself, but I am waiting to hear back from the Kong Company as to whether this is a recommended method for cleaning nasty Kongs. Any toy that is dishwasher-safe should also be safe to boil for a few minutes to sterilize it.

I usually leave the toys in the dish rack or on the windowsill to dry, sometimes I skip this step and just restuff and freeze them immediately. In her Behavioral Adjustment Training book, Grisha Stewart says she skips the cleaning step entirely and just puts the toys back in the freezer as soon as the dogs are done with them. I'd probably do this if I didn't have to worry about getting dog hair in the peanut butter.