Feeding & Nutrition

My terrier, Biscuit, could dismantle a cardboard box in eleven seconds flat. I timed him once, recklessly, and regretted the mess for a week. The sofa cushions, the post, the remote controls, all of it fair game if I left the room for longer than a blink.

The Kong was a last resort. A friend handed it over at a barbecue and said, try peanut butter, you'll get twenty minutes. She undersold it badly.

I smear a finger of the stuff inside, right into the hollow, and the dog forgets the world exists. He lies on the kitchen rug, back legs splayed, tongue working the opening like it owes him money. The first time I heard the house go quiet I actually went and checked he was still breathing.

We buy the cheap supermarket smooth one, not the fancy health-food crunchy kind. Crunchy bits get stuck and he loses interest halfway, then the rug gets dug at like a prisoner tunneling out. Smooth is the move. The vet said a little is fine for a dog his size, but I keep it to a thin smear because the calories add up faster than you'd think, and Biscuit does not need a peanut-butter belly.

There's a method to where I put it. Too shallow and he licks it clean in thirty seconds and the spell breaks. Too deep and he gives up and the box-dismantling resumes within minutes. The sweet spot is about a knuckle's worth, worked into the narrow end so he has to really grind for it with the side of his tongue.

On bad days, when the neighbours are drilling or the postman does his thunderous rounds, the Kong is the thing that keeps him from losing his mind. I'll hand it over and go sit with a cup of tea I actually finish. Half an hour of peace, bought with ninety pence of peanut butter.

The funny part is he now associates the sound of the jar lid with pure joy. The click of the lid and his paws are already dancing before I've even unscrewed it. I've accidentally opened a jam jar and triggered the same reaction, which confused us both for a moment.

I tried freezing it once, thinking longer is better, forty minutes instead of thirty. He loved it, but then he'd guard the frozen Kong from the cat, who couldn't care less about peanut butter, and that's a whole other problem I won't get into here.

Some mornings I'll stuff it and leave it on the rug before I even make coffee, just to buy myself the quiet to wake up properly. He finds it, settles, and the house stays calm until I'm human again.

Mostly it's just the small mercy of a quiet kitchen. Biscuit gets his project, I get to drink tea while it's hot, and the boxes in the recycling stay intact for one more day. I'd call that a fair trade, and cheaper than a behaviourist.

I take one to the vet's waiting room now, the smeared Kong, for the dogs who shake on the scale. It keeps Biscuit's brain busy while the weighing happens, and the nurse stopped bracing herself for a struggle. A cheap trick that makes a stressful errand quieter for everyone in the room.

The cat, Maud, has opinions about the whole affair. She sits on the counter and watches him work the Kong like it's a television programme she finds beneath her, then steals the last lick if he abandons it. I've started giving her a dab on a saucer, separately, so there's no turf war over ninety pence of spread.

I've also taken to smearing a little on a lick mat for bath days, when he'd otherwise treat the bathroom like a wrestling ring. Spread thin, stuck to the mat on the closed toilet lid, and he's too busy to notice the shampoo. Grooming went from a two-person wrestling match to something I do alone, with one hand free for the rinse.

There's a line, obviously. The Kong is a tool, not a pacifier, and I don't hand it over every time he so much as sighs, or he'd never learn to just be a dog without a project. But on the days that need it, the days with drills and postmen and long meetings, it's the small thing that keeps the peace.

The real test came on a long train journey, when Biscuit had to sit in a carrier for three hours and the carriage was full of noises he'd never met. I'd smeared two Kongs, one for the start, one for the middle, and he worked through both with the focus of a dog who'd forgotten we were moving. The man across from us asked if he was always that calm, and I didn't have the heart to explain it was ninety pence of smooth peanut butter holding the whole arrangement together.