Pixel Reviews: Fun Feeders

When we first met Pixel he was bouncing off of the walls. He was all energy and unused intelligence. With this in mind we set out to find ways to exhaust him and entertain him at every opportunity and one way we achieved this is through making Pixel work for his food.

Kong Wobbler

The Kong Wobbler was the first feeder we picked up. The large, red, plastic weeble is an easy way to introduce some stimulation to your dog's meal time. Pixel uses his paws to bat around the Wobbler which sends it spinning and food scattering. Pixel then gets the fun of searching around the room every piece of kibble that he sent flying.

The Wobbler also provides a fantastic way of feeding your dogs that prevents them from gulping down their food. Instead the dog is fed a small amount of food (in our case roughly four or five pieces of kibble with each bat).

The Wobbler, which unscrews at the middle, is incredibly easy to clean, you can simply wipe it with a damp cloth after each feeding and it will remain clean and tidy. From the perspective of the owner there are two clear disadvantages to feeding with the Wobbler. The first of these is that the Wobbler can be very noisy, Pixel regularly sends it spinning into a wall or door-frame (although this leaves no marks) which creates a loud bang. The Wobbler is also quite heavy, it is weighted to always ensure it is self-righting, but it does mean it can be awkward if you travel regularly and you want to take a way of feeding your dog with you.

Slo-Bowl Flower

After the first month of owning Pixel and he had settled into a comfortable routine, he began to gulp his food. We would use the Wobbler regularly but if we wanted to feed the dog early in the morning we felt self-conscious about the noise it makes so I went and purchased the Slo-Bowl.

The Slo-Bowl Flower feeder is an easy way to prevent Pixel from gulping his food. We pour the kibble into the bowl, Pixel then has to use his tongue to navigate the food around the maze to push it to a place where he can easily eat the food. There are several varieties of Slo-Bowl, including their being two sizes, we selected the Flower design as it looked like the most challenging of the designs (and I like to make Pixel work).

While the Slo-Bowl is by far the best food bowl I have ever owned, it does have a specific drawback. While the bowl is top-shelf dishwasher safe, if you don't have a dishwasher it can be quiet difficult to keep the bowl clean. Despite regular cleaning I am never fully satisfied with how clean it ends up.

Rosewood Treat Ball

Originally wanting to purchase the IQ Treat Ball (they are only available online), I picked up the Rosewood Treat Ball when I spotted it in a pet shop while browsing. When Pixel is using this Fun Feeder, he will nose the ball around the house, chasing it excitedly. The Treat Ball has an adjustable opening so that you can increase or decrease the difficulty of getting food.

Like the Wobbler, the Treat Ball also suffers from being a noisy way to feed your dog as they push it into the walls, but this is a minor inconvenience. The worst part of this feeder is that you cannot open the ball in anyway which means that you have to place the food into the ball via the small opening. It's quite impractical and I spend half of the time picking up the kibble I have dropped. The difficulty on this feeder does not seem to scale well either, the easiest setting seems to drop food regularly while the harder settings can mean that food is not dropped at all, I understand that this is the point, but if you wanted to gradually make it hard, it is almost impossible to do so. I kinda wish I had waited and bought an IQ Treat Ball.

Recommendations

 If was pushed to recommend only one of these Fun Feeders, it would have to be the Slo-Bowl. It takes between five and ten minutes for Pixel to eat a meal and the bowl is easy to carry about. While I love the Wobbler and enjoy watching Pixel eat from it, the fact that it is heavy means that it simply isn't suitable for people who travel regularly. The Rosewood Treat Ball, while nice to use for the sake of variety, simply is too difficult to fill with food which puts me off using it. If you want to provide a variety of stimulation then I would suggest at least picking up two of these products, or maybe two different styled Slo-Bowls. If you are looking for fun and a way to entertain your dogs, I would suggest the Kong Wobbler.