Product Review: Starmark Treat Dispensing Football

Starmark's Treat Dispensing Football is a crunching toy that can be filled with treats for added fun. It is, or was, available in two different sizes, but does not currently appear on the company's website.

Photo by Erin Koski

The girls got this toy for Christmas because I found it in a clearance bin, but so far it has been a major hit. It makes a crackling noise similar to the Kong Squeezz Crackle Ball, but is much, much more durable. IT is currently the favored fetch toy in the house, and they haven't managed to fetch it to death yet.

There are a lot of reviews of this toy that mention dogs being able to pull the treat-dispensing bits out of the ends. It's possible that is why the ball is not currently described on Starmark's website.

Photo by Erin Koski

Pros

• Makes a crunchy sound
• Pretty durable, will handle endless squishing/crunching
• Can be stuffed with treats

Cons

• Treat-dispensing ends may be easy to rip off (my dogs have not though)

Bottom Line

As a fetch toy, this thing is pretty awesome. We've had it for over two months and they have not managed to fetch it to death yet. It might be the most durable crackle toy out there.

Tikr by Sbark

Sbark has invented the most amazing puzzle toy, Tikr is a super-durable food-dispensing toy that opens with a timer. It's like an egg timer and a Kong Wobbler that dispenses different types of treats at different times. You can set the timer for up to 45 minutes, and the toy will open bit by bit, allowing the goodies out.

Photo by Erin Koski

 A Kong and a Egg Timer

I got to meet the inventors of the Tikr at SuperZoo 2016, and hear firsthand how they came up with this idea. They had been using regular Kongs for years to keep their dogs busy. You know the drill, stuff it with goodies and watch your dog empty it out in a few minutes. You can freeze it for a longer unstuffing session, but your dog is still going to empty it in well under an hour.

The idea for the Tikr came when one of the creators set a classic Kong toy down on top of a magazine with an egg timer on the cover. Thus came the idea of incorporating a simple torque timer into a dog toy in order to stretch out playtime.

Photo by Erin Koski

A Puzzling Puzzle

I came home from SuperZoo and immediately preordered a Tikr, and it finally arrived a few weeks ago. Sbark was even kind enough to send along some extra Tikr treats with my order. This thing is so cool!

The Tikr has one inner treat chamber, and three different-sized openings. Wind the timer, and the green chamber slowly rotates. When the opening in the green chamber matches up with one of the outer holes, treats come out! 

Photo by Erin Koski

The genius is in the size of the openings. The smallest one opens up first, releasing only the smallest treats. The medium-sized one opens next, and then final the biggest hole releases anything left.

The inner chamber has a peg sticking up from the center, onto which a softer treat can be impaled for an additional challenge. The largest Tikr treats have a hole in the center, presumably for sticking them on there. Unfortunately, the  treats are pretty crunchy and so far I've only succeeded in shattering them when I try that. gonna have to try sticking a chunk of cheese or something there instead.

Photo by Erin Koski

Tikr Treats

You can put any kind of dry or semi-moist treats in the Tikr, they even mention kibble and have pictures of dog biscuits. However, Tikr also sells nifty little gear-shaped treats in three sizes. The teeth on the gears lock together when you cram them into the toy, and of course they are just the right size to fall out when the right hole opens up.

The Verdict

Photo by Erin Koski

Godzilla and Zip love this thing. It has a timer that goes off when a new aperture opens up, to let them know when it's time to play again. I do have a small concern about Sisci Godzilla getting her lower jaw stuck inside the biggest opening, though. There are reports of lower jaw entrapment incidents happening with a bunch of different puzzle toys, and for this reason I am going to be supervising my dogs with the Tikr.

This is a flexible rubber-compound toy that stands up to some chewing. A ton of research went into finding the exact formula that would be durable enough without damaging anyone's teeth or clunking around on hardwood floors. Sbark currently recommends the Tikr be used by dogs under 50 pounds, only under supervision, and that owners should discourage dogs from gnawing on it.

Photo by Erin Koski

Our Tikr has taken some minor damage around the top, because Zip enjoys gnawing stuff. So far it's only cosmetic, though. I expect this toy to last forever. Sbark is currently developing an Extreme version for larger dogs, and I look forward to seeing what else they come up with!

Caturday: How to Keep the Dog Out of the Cat Food

It's Caturday, and we're fighting a neverending battle to keep the cat food out of the dogs. Lets face it, dogs love cat food. Whether it's wet or dry, they can't resist. A bowl of cat food left on the floor is definitely going to get devoured. Keeping the cat food in a dog-free zone makes perfect sense if you've always had a dog and just added a cat to the family, but I met plenty of cat people that got a dog and then discovered their pup would do anything to get to the cat food. How do you win this arm's race?

Put the Cat Food Up High

They were just sitting on my lap like that.

Dog can reach the counter? Put the cat food on top of the refrigerator. Dog can get on top of the refrigerator? Put the cat food on top of a tall bookshelf. Dog can get on top of the bookshelf? Mount shelves on the wall. I had been feeding my cats on a windowsill until Godzilla discovered that she could climb on furniture to get up there, now I feed them on the cat shelves I added a few months ago.

Make a Cats-Only Zone

You can use a baby gate to keep your dog out of one room, but I still highly recommend putting the cat food up high anyway. That way your dog won't have an incentive to bulldoze through the gate for an easy snack. If your dog is bigger than your cat (I'm looking at you, Ru.), you can also put a hook or a nail in the wall near the door frame, and loop a string from there around the doorknob so the door only opens a crack. This works well if you have a dog that can jump babygates. Again, put the cat food somewhere inaccessible so your dog won't have an instant reward for thwarting your plans. 

The string and door method also works for cabinets, and can help make a dog-proof place at ground-level for cats with mobility issues.

Technology

There are some interesting products out there for solving this particular issue, though I have my doubts about them. SureFlap now makes a SureFeed bowl that reads your cat's microchip and only opens for the right cat. This seems like a good solution for feeding two cats separately, or keeping your small or mildly interested dog out of the cat food. I can't imagine it would thwart a large or determined dog. There are several other smart feeders out there, I plan to write more about them in the future.

The Feed-Safe is a plastic dome that you stick your cat in to feed them. You can lock the main door, and there is an escape flap that will let them out but cannot be opened from the outside. This doesn't allow the cat the access their food anytime though, you have to put them inside there. I can also imagine a large dog knocking this thing around like a giant puzzle ball.

Go Big.

No matter what you do to keep the cat food out of the dog, make sure you do something effective. Take several different measures if you can. The last thing you want to do is enter an arms race where your dog continually learns new skills. Example: Cat food on floor of bedroom with large piece of cardboard across doorway. Dog learns to push down cardboard so you replace it with a pressure-mounted babygate. Dog learns to push that over so you put the cat food up on a dresser. Dog learns to push down babygate and stand up to reach top of dresser, so you move the food to a higher shelf. Dog learns to climb on top of dresser to reach shelf. If you had started with both the babygate and the food on the shelf, the dog probably wouldn't have had the motivation to learn how to push the babygate down in the first place.

Do you have both a cat and a dog? How do you dog-proof your cat's food?