Puzzle toys are essential for healthy dog enrichment — a behavior vet explains why

Yahoo

12-05-2025

Have you heard of dog puzzle toys? They give pups the chance to sniff, scratch, dig and hunt for treats. My toy poodle loves his, and a trainer once told me that toys like these could help tire him out on rainy days when neither of us wants to go for a walk. I also recently spoke with a behavior veterinarian, who revealed that these types of challenges are even more important for your dog than you might think.
Dr. Andrea Y. Tu, DVM, is chief of veterinary behavior services at the Heart of Chelsea Veterinary Group in New York City. She treats animals for things like separation anxiety, reactivity and other behavioral issues and told me puzzle toys are one of her favorite tools for canine enrichment. "Dogs need something to do. They really don't get a lot of enrichment and ... natural stimulation that they would if they lived outside," she says. "These puzzle toys allow that kind of exploration, like foraging, for instance. It allows a bit of that activity in the natural sense," she says.
Tu explains that dogs instinctively want to sniff and hunt. While outdoors is the natural environment for that behavior, most pups only go outside for a small part of their day. Without longer stints, they get bored or anxious — or both — and look for ways to entertain themselves. This is why they do things like destroy your favorite pair of shoes or bark excessively.
"So, making sure that they get what they naturally need really helps with those kinds of mental health behavioral concerns," she says.
Tu says the first step to prevent canine boredom is to change how you feed your dog. "If I could do one thing that I hope will make a big difference in my field, it's to get rid of the bowl," she notes. "All meals should be fed out of a puzzle toy. If every single meal can be fed out of a puzzle toy or some sort of manipulation toy instead of a bowl, that would do wonders for pets' enrichment and mental health."
This recommendation is based on a concept called contrafreeloading, which states that some animals, when given a choice, prefer to work for food even when an identical meal is readily available. "That's where puzzle toys come in, or anything that they have to explore, look, dig, push around, play around with," Tu says, noting that the use of such products works with a dog's "natural instinct of how feeding should occur and all of that important behavior that relates to feeding." She even encourages pet owners to occasionally increase the challenge by hiding a puzzle underneath a blanket or creating further diversions that require a dog to seek out their sustenance.
Tu also shares that these challenges don't have to be food-focused — it's more about the hunt. If your dog is very playful and less food-motivated, for example, they might enjoy a puzzle stuffed with smaller toys rather than treats.
Keep in mind that puzzle toys don't have to be difficult — in other words, the goal isn't to stump your dog. Your pup may be content wrangling a peanut butter-stuffed Kong one day, while the next she'll enjoy using her nose and paws to dig around a more complicated challenge. The aim is to have a mix of easy and hard options.
Tu explains it like this: If you like to play games on your phone, some days you'll tackle the challenging New York Times crossword puzzle while on others you'll opt for Bubble Shooter because it's easier, helps calm nervous energy or just gives your brain time to decompress. "The goal is to have different versions [of puzzle games]" for your dogs. She also advises against getting overly complex products that can't be solved. "If you get the ones that are super complicated, they do get frustrated and they won't want to play with it anymore."
Additionally, Tu says, puzzle toys don't need to be expensive and can even be DIY. An easy one she recommends, particularly for gentle chewers, is punching holes in a paper towel tube, filling it with kibble and sealing the ends so your dog can roll it around until all the food falls out.
For dogs who need a tougher challenge, she recommends a Russian Dolls-esque box approach: "Fill a smaller cardboard box with some crumpled up newspaper and kibble hidden in the paper, punch small holes in the small box, then put that in a medium box that is loosely closed. The goal is to let your dog destroy the larger box to get to the smaller box, and either roll around the smaller box so the kibble falls out or open it up to get at the crumpled paper inside."
The bottom line? Creating a puzzle diversion for your pet does not need to involve a lot of expense or effort. I've thrown kibble or treats into my dog's toy basket and let him dig through it until he finds each tasty morsel.
Don't want to DIY a puzzle toy and need something durable? Tu recommends these.
Want more ideas? I reached out to the Yahoo Shopping team to share their favorites — and included two of my own at the end.
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