Feeding & Nutrition

August hit forty degrees and my collie, Bram, started melting by ten in the morning, flopping in the shaded bit of the kitchen floor and staring at the water bowl like it had personally wronged him. Walks moved to sixam and ninepm, the garden was off limits past noon, and I ran out of ideas for keeping him occupied that didn't involve the oven of a house. Then I remembered the Kong, the red rubber cone I'd bought and barely used, and I finally learned what it was for.

I stuffed it with his usual kibble, plugged the small end with a dab of peanut butter that had no xylitol in it, because that sweetener is poison to dogs and I check the jar now out of habit, and I ran it under the cold tap before freezing it solid overnight. The freezing is the whole point. A frozen Kong buys twenty minutes of focused licking, and licking cools a dog down from the inside the way panting tries to from the outside.

The first one I gave him on the worst day, he took it to his cool tile and went at it with the serious focus he usually reserves for squirrels. Twenty-three minutes, I timed it, of quiet, dripping concentration, and when it was done he flopped again but seemed, if not happy, at least less like a creature plotting his escape. I made two a day through the peak week, one after breakfast, one before the evening, and they became the structure his cancelled walks used to provide.

Variety kept him interested when the novelty wore off. Plain yoghurt mixed with a mashed banana went in one, a spoon of the wet food he likes went in another, and once I mashed a bit of the cooked chicken I'd made for myself and froze that. The peanut butter plug at the tip is what makes him work for it rather than give up, because without a little resistance the kibble falls straight out and the game ends in ten seconds.

I learned to plan ahead, because a frozen Kong is only frozen if you remembered the night before, and the night before is exactly when you're tired and would rather not. I kept two in rotation so there was always one ready, and a small tub of pre-stuffed ones in the freezer for the days I forgot. The prep takes two minutes. The payoff is a dog who isn't climbing the curtains because he's bored and hot and has nothing to do.

He's fine now the weather's broken, and the Kongs have stayed in the routine because they were useful long before the heatwave made them essential. But I'll remember that week, the house too warm to think in, and a red rubber cone that bought us both a little peace. Sometimes the simplest thing in the cupboard is the one you reach for last, and it turns out to be the one you needed.

Not every dog takes to a frozen Kong the way Bram did, and I'd be dishonest to pretend otherwise. A friend's terrier batted hers across the floor and gave up when nothing fell out fast enough, so she switched to a lick mat, the flat silicone pad you smear food across, which worked better for a dog who likes to scrape rather than excavate. The principle is the same, slow food, cool food, a job for a bored mind, just a different shape to suit a different dog.

I froze a few with plain water and a smear of wet food for the very hottest days, the ones where even the shaded kitchen felt warm, because a block of ice he could lick was cooler than any toy. He'd lie with it between his paws, dripping, calm in a way the heat usually forbids, and I'd sit nearby with my own cold drink feeling like I'd finally done the obvious thing everyone else already knew about.

The heatwave passed, as they do, but the habit stuck, because a dog who gets a puzzle at breakfast is a dog who starts the day settled rather than wound up. Bram still gets one most mornings, frozen in summer, plain in winter, and the red cone that once saved us through forty degrees is now just part of how the house runs, which is the best kind of tool, the one you forget was ever a fix rather than a fixture.

I keep two in the freezer on rotation, which sounds like more organisation than I usually manage, but the cost of forgetting is a bored collie at the worst hour of a hot day, and that's a price I've paid once and didn't enjoy. The freezer door opens, the red cone comes out, the dog settles, and the house goes quiet in a way that has nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with a dog who's been given something to do.