City of Tracy Animal Services: KONG Toys Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
The donation of KONGs was amazing for our shelter! Each day, we fill ALL of our KONGs with amazing goodies such as spray cheese, wet food, cream cheese, yogurt, apples, or bananas. Once filled, we freeze them.
Each evening we provide our dogs a nighttime snack before staff leaves for the day. Each dog devours theirs and they come to look forward to our end-of-day routine for them.
Due to our high-volume KONG use, receiving such a large donation was so important, as KONGs can be destroyed or deteriorate over time. This box of KONGs truly helped us revamp our quantities and allows for staff to have spares on hand.
How many pets did this grant help?
450
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
Socrates is a big, handsome boy! He has a fun amount of energy; however, in the kennel he started showing signs that he was growing anxious.
As one of our calming techniques, we began utilizing KONGs in different types of scenarios. First, we exposed Socrates to the KONG in his kennel to gauge his interest level and to see if it was a tool that we could continue to use.
Once we witnessed his eagerness to lick and chew to gain the goodies out of the middle, we began utilizing them for our “egg hunt” routine: We have begun hiding different types of treats for Socrates to use his nose to find when he’s taken out in our play yard.
One of those treats is a frozen KONG, as he has been extremely enthusiastic with them. We were so happy to see his anxious behavior begin to settle. We continue to work on calm in his kennel, and having the ability to build on this by utilizing a KONG toy has been immensely helpful!
