Best enrichment toy for a Pomeranian puppy

Mental stimulation is genuinely as important as physical exercise for most dogs — a bored dog is often a destructive or anxious dog, and Pomeranians especially have busy little brains that need a job to do. The right enrichment toy depends on your dog's intelligence level, how persistent they are, and what problem you're actually trying to fix — boredom, chewing, separation anxiety, or something else entirely. To point you in the right direction: what breed and age is your dog, what's the main problem you're hoping to solve, and have you tried any enrichment toys already?

Maple sounds brilliant — Pomeranians at eight months are right in that chewy, curious, slightly chaotic phase, so this is a great time to build good habits. A couple of quick questions before I point you to one specific thing: does Maple tend to give up quickly when something's challenging, or does she stick at it? And is the mouthiness directed at you and the furniture, or more general puppy chewing?

Perfect — persistent and attention-seeking is exactly the profile where one toy shines above everything else. Get a KONG Classic in the small size (the red one, rated for puppies up to around 9kg, which fits Maple perfectly). Stuff it with a mix of her kibble and a small amount of peanut butter or cream cheese, freeze it overnight, and give it to her when you need hands-free time with the baby. Here's why it doubles as a training aid: you can use it as a reward for settling on her mat, so you're actively teaching her that calm, independent behaviour is what earns the good stuff. The frozen filling extends the challenge to 15–20 minutes even for a persistent dog, which is genuinely long enough to feed the baby or get something done. It's around £7–9 on Amazon UK for the small size, well within your budget, and one KONG with rotating fillings will keep her engaged for months. The mouthiness at hands and ankles is almost always an understimulation signal — once she has a reliable outlet for that energy, you'll likely see it reduce within a week or two.

You can absolutely use it daily — the key is rotating the fillings so it stays interesting. Kibble and peanut butter one day, a smear of soft cheese with some blueberries the next, plain Greek yoghurt with a bit of banana another time. The KONG itself doesn't change but the smell and taste does, and that's enough variation for most dogs. Pomeranians are food-motivated enough that a novel filling genuinely resets their interest. Freeze a few in advance on a Sunday and you've got the whole week sorted — takes about five minutes of prep total.