Recently I stumbled upon an iPhone controlled dog treat dispensing device [4]built by Stephen Myers. The Biomedical Engineer PhD student created the dispenser to interact with his dog Cooper during his long grad school days. 

The one-of-a-kind creation allows Stephen to monitor his pup by web cam and deliver treats from anywhere his iPhone receives service. He details how the dispenser was built on his blog [4].

I’m always on the lookout for new treat dispensing toys to keep my crew busy while I’m at work, so I was excited to discover such an innovative device. Unfortunately Stephen isn’t selling his creation and I definitely don’t have the technical expertise to build it (let alone in Stephen’s amazing one hour time frame!). 

So I’ll have to rely on my trusty Kong Time [5]and collection of manual food dispensing toys, like the Buster Cube [6] or the DogPyramid [7]. However, I can only imagine the impact this valuable training tool could have on solving boredom behaviors like barking and furniture chewing.

How do you keep your dogs busy while you’re out?