Feeding & Nutrition

A Kong is a rubber toy shaped like a beehive with a hole through the middle, and for the first month I owned one I used it wrong, smeared a bit of paste in the tip, gave it, watched him lick it clean in nine seconds, and wondered why people raved. The rave, it turns out, is in the freezing, and I learned that the day I needed three hours and a dog who thought three hours was a personal insult.

I stuffed it properly. Kibble, a spoon of plain yogurt, a mashed bit of banana, wedged in tight, then more kibble, then the whole thing in the freezer overnight. The cold turns the inside to a block he has to melt with tongue and patience, and a spaniel with a frozen block in his mouth is a spaniel who has a job, and a dog with a job is not a dog under your feet asking what we're doing now, we could be doing something, why are we not doing something.

The first frozen Kong bought me an afternoon. Not silence, he grunted, he dropped it, he chased it under the chair, he fetched it back to me to open, which I didn't, and he went at it again, but an afternoon where the question was his to answer, not mine, and I sat and read a book, an actual book, the kind with pages, for the first time since he'd arrived, and the house was calm in a way it hadn't been, a working calm, a dog working.

People think feeding is quick, bowl down, bowl up, done, and that's fine, but it's also a chance to tire a dog's brain, which tires him more than a walk does, the boring truth trainers tell you and you ignore until you try it. A frozen Kong is twenty minutes of problem-solving for him and twenty minutes of nothing for me, and twenty minutes of nothing, with a spaniel, is a holiday, a short one, but a holiday.

I vary the fill now so he doesn't get bored of the same prize. Veg, the safe ones, a bit of cheese, the pate from the vet-recommended tube, never anything salty, never anything he shouldn't, because the point is to occupy him, not to test his stomach, and the freezer drawer has a row of them, little rubber bombs, ready for the days I need the afternoon back, which is most days, if I'm honest, because a dog is forever and the afternoon is short.

The mess is the only downside. The yogurt weeps as it thaws, the banana gets on the floor, and you learn to give it on a mat, the same mat, the one that's seen worse, and you stop caring about the mat because the mat paid for the book, the quiet, the hour where the house was his problem and not yours. A dog who licks a frozen toy on a mat is a dog who's been fed and enriched and left alone on purpose, which is a kinder alone than the kind he fears.

He brings me the empty one now, the signal that the job is done, the way a worker brings the time sheet, and I take it, rinse it, refill it, freeze it, and the cycle keeps the afternoons mine. A rubber beehive, some kibble, a freezer, and the small freedom of sitting down while a spaniel solves a problem he gave himself, which is the closest either of us gets to a hobby, and hobbies are what make a dog a pet instead of a project.

I've started freezing two, one for now and one for the day I forget, because forgetting means the afternoon is his again, and his afternoons are loud. The spare sits in the drawer like a promise, and the promise is the point, that I can have three hours, that the dog can have a job, that the two things are not enemies, they're a deal, struck by a toy and kept by a freezer, and the freezer is the most useful appliance in the house, after the kettle, which the dog also loves, for reasons we've covered.

The neighbours heard the grunting, asked once if the dog was alright, and I said he was working, and they looked at me like I'd lost the plot, and maybe I had, a little, the plot where the dog is a project and not a pet, but the grunt is the sound of a spaniel solving a problem, and a problem solved is a dog tired, and a tired spaniel is a spaniel you can live with, and the living with is the point, the afternoon that's mine because the toy is his, and the toy is frozen, and the freezer is the quiet hero of the story.

I've given them to other dogs, the spares, the ones I froze by mistake, and the friends' dogs took to them the same way, the lick, the chase, the return, the empty, and a Kong is a cheap gift with a long tail, the tail being the afternoon you get back, and I hand them out like a dealer of small freedoms, because the freedom is real, an hour where the dog is busy and you are not, and the not is rare, and the rare is worth a rubber toy and a freezer shelf, and the shelf is full, and the full is the calm.