The first two weeks Moose was in our house, I could not sit down for longer than a minute. He came home from a Myrtle Beach shelter in early March at about four months old, all legs and nerves, and every new sound in the neighborhood set him pacing from the front door to the kitchen and back. I tried a chew toy. I tried the television. I tried the soft voice I use on the phone with my sister. What finally let me sit down with my crocheting was a rubber mat with a textured surface and a spoonful of plain yogurt smeared across it. The brand is LICKIMAT, and I bought the two-pack of the Classic Soother and the Buddy in April.
I am not a trainer, a behaviorist or a vet. I am a retired dental office manager who adopted a shelter puppy and read every label in the aisle. What follows is ten things that mat did in our house over these months, in the order I noticed them. Some of it will match your dog. Some of it will not, and I say so where it applies. For serious anxiety, bites or anything medical, call your vet or a certified trainer. Not a mat.
The mat that got me sitting down again
The Classic Soother and Buddy come as a two-pack of textured TPR rubber mats, 8 by 8 inches, hand wash only. Moose uses both. One is always in the sink while the other is on the floor.
Amazon See the 2-pack on Amazon →Gives a nervous dog a job in the first five minutes
A rescue dog in a strange house has nothing to do and no idea how to do it. Moose walked laps from the front door to the kitchen for twenty minutes at a stretch. The first day I smeared a thin layer of plain yogurt on the Soother and set it on the floor, he stopped moving and started working. A bowl of the same yogurt is gone in four seconds. The mat makes him slow down and concentrate. The listing says the textured surface helps release endorphins through licking. I cannot verify that from my kitchen. What I can tell you is that his breathing slowed and he stopped pacing.
Makes the ten minutes before I leave easier on both of us
Leaving the house was the hardest part of the first month. He would follow me to the door and whine before I had my keys out. Now I set the mat down with something frozen on it about ten minutes before I go, and he works at it while I put my shoes on. I always pick the mat up before I walk out the door. He is never left alone with it, and I would not leave any dog alone with a food toy. The point is the ten minutes before, not the hours after.
Gets us through a summer thunderstorm with less pacing
We had our first real thunderstorm in June, and Moose spent the hour before it pacing and panting. I got the mat out of the drawer with plain yogurt on it and sat on the kitchen floor with him. He licked at it between the worst of the thunder claps and then lay down. It did not make the storm pleasant for him. It gave him something to do besides pace, and it gave me something to do besides watch him pace. If your dog is badly frightened of storms, that is a conversation for your vet, not a kitchen remedy.
Turned nail trims into one person's job
Trimming Moose's nails used to take two of us and a towel. Now Gary holds the paw and I hold the mat, and Moose works at a thin smear of peanut butter while I clip. The first time we tried it, I got three nails done before he noticed what I was doing. Three is not eight, but three was better than the zero we managed the month before. I keep the peanut butter thin so his stomach does not pay for it later, and I stop when he stops caring about the mat.
Freezing it stretches five minutes into fifteen
A room temperature mat with wet food on it buys maybe five minutes. A frozen one buys considerably longer, and the frozen version is what I reach for when I need a real stretch of quiet. I spread wet food thin, freeze it overnight, and run the mat under warm water for a few seconds to loosen it before I hand it over. Thin matters. A thick layer takes too long to soften and he walks away from it.
Two mats and two textures mean one is always clean
The LICKIMAT pack gives you two mats with two different surface patterns, so one can be in the sink while the other is on the floor. That sounds like a small thing until you are washing a mat twice a day. The care instructions say hand wash only, so that is what I do, a little dish soap and a rinse in the kitchen sink. I have not put mine in the dishwasher even though the listing also mentions it. The two textures seem to hold his interest differently and I have not worked out why.
Small enough to live in the kitchen drawer
Each mat is 8 inches by 8 inches and weighs a little over 7 ounces, so it slides into the drawer with the pot holders and I can pick it up one handed with a dog leaning on my leg. It also means it fits in a tote bag if we go to my sister's for the afternoon. I have not found a use for it outdoors. At the beach it would just collect sand, and I am not carrying a sandy mat home in the car.
Gives him something to do when guests reach the door
Moose jumped on everyone who came through the front door for months. We used the clicker for four paws on the floor, which helped, but a dog cannot hold a sit and lick at the same time, and that turned out to be the useful part. Now when the doorbell rings I set the mat down a few feet back from the door, and he goes to it while I let my sister in. It is not training. It is management, and it buys the training time to work.
A low-risk way to find out if licking is your dog's thing
I had no idea whether Moose would even care about licking. Some dogs do not. Mine is food motivated enough that he took to it the first day. A friend's terrier mix sniffed hers and went back to the couch. That is not a failure of the mat, that dog just does not work that way. If you are unsure, the two-pack gives you two textures to try before you decide whether licking is a tool you will keep using.
Taught me what actually settles him, and what only looks like it does
Watching Moose work at the mat showed me that he settles fastest when his mouth has a job and I am nearby but not talking at him. That was not obvious to me before. It also showed me the limits. When he is truly frightened, the mat sits there and he ignores it, and I have to change what I am doing instead of insisting. A mat is a tool. It is not a fix, and I would not trust anyone who told you a LICKIMAT would settle a scared dog on its own.
What I'd Skip
If I were starting over, I would skip half the things I bought in March and buy this first. I would skip leaving the mat down on the floor all day, because a mat that is always available stops being interesting, and because I do not leave Moose alone with a food toy. I would skip the thick smear of peanut butter that took longer to finish than my patience lasted. And I would skip the idea that any of this replaces training. The mat helped him settle. The clicker, the harness and a lot of short sessions did the rest. The LICKIMAT is what I reach for when I need ten quiet minutes, and that is all I ask of it.
He worked at the frozen mat for eleven minutes, then lay down on the kitchen floor and slept. That had not happened once in the weeks before.
Ten quiet minutes, most days
The Classic Soother and Buddy two-pack, textured rubber, 8 by 8 inches, hand wash only. It is the least complicated thing in my kitchen drawer, and the one I would replace first if it went missing.
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