LickiMat Classic Soother Review: Months of Daily Use in a House Full of Dogs

The nail clippers come out and the dog turns to stone. Front paws tucked under, back end sliding backwards across the tile, eyes fixed on the door. I have trimmed nails on other people's dogs in my house in Tehachapi for nine years now, and not one of them has ever volunteered for it. What changed the job for me was not a better pair of clippers. It was putting something flat on the floor for the dog to lick while I worked, so the mouth is busy and the feet stop negotiating. The LickiMat Classic Soother has been that something for three years, and it is the least complicated piece of gear in this house.

I own two. They are stacked in the cupboard with the dog towels and they come out for nail trims, for baths, and for the first evening a nervous guest dog spends here. That is the whole job description. It is not a puzzle, it is not a chew toy, and it has never fixed a behaviour problem in this house. But when you need a dog to hold still for six minutes, or you need a dog to stop pacing a strange hallway at eight in the evening, a flat rubber mat with something soft smeared across it does more than a bowl of kibble ever will.

How I've Used It

I bought the first one three years ago for a guest dog that screamed through a bath. Not whined. Screamed. I had tried holding a bowl of peanut butter at arm's length and got most of it on my sleeve instead of into the dog. A thin smear of plain yogurt on a mat on the bathroom floor got the dog's head down and its feet still, and I finished that bath in under ten minutes with both of us intact. I have not done a bath without one since.

The second mat came a month later so there was always one clean in the cupboard. Both are still here. The routine has not changed: a thin layer, not a thick one. A thick layer of yogurt buys you about four minutes, because the dog licks the top off and walks away. A thin layer that you can still see the mat through takes about ten minutes to clear, and about twenty if I spread it and lay the mat in the freezer first, which is my habit on hot afternoons. Learning to spread it thinner than felt natural took me a few weeks.

The mat is about eight inches square, so it fits on the bathroom floor beside the tub, on the tile by the kitchen counter, or on the porch step without being underfoot. It weighs a touch over three ounces, which means a dog cannot drag it far and it does not clatter when it gets knocked. When it is done it goes on the top rack of the dishwasher. LICKIMAT's own listing calls it dishwasher safe, and three years of near daily cycles has not warped, cracked or curled either of mine.

What the Soother Surface Is Actually Doing

LICKIMAT sells this mat in a few surface patterns and the Soother is the one I bought. The point of any of them is the same. The surface has enough texture that a dog's tongue has to work to get the food out of it, which stretches a four second snack into a ten minute job. That is the whole mechanism. It is not complicated and it does not need to be, and you can see it working the first time you put one down.

The LICKIMAT listing goes further than I will. It talks about endorphins, about calming and soothing, about dental health and about vets and trainers recommending it. I am not a vet and I am not a trainer, and I am not going to hand you a manufacturer's line as though it were something I measured. What I can tell you is what I watched in my own kitchen. A dog that was pacing stopped pacing. A dog that was fighting a nail trim stopped fighting it. Whether that is endorphins or just the fact that licking is a slow behaviour and slow behaviours are hard to do while you are also spinning, I do not know, and I am not sure the difference matters much to the dog.

Chewing works the same way, which is why the KONG Extreme does a similar job for Pepper at seven in the evening. The difference is that a mat is flat and does not roll under the sofa, and a mat suits a dog that is too wound up to settle into a chew. I use both. They are not competing for the same ten minutes.

Three Years of Wear: What Held Up

Both mats have been through the dishwasher hundreds of times. Neither has cracked, curled at the corners or gone chalky the way cheap rubber does after a summer. The surface texture is still there. If I hold one up to the window I can see it has gone a little duller where the tongues work hardest, and that is the sum total of the wear across three years.

The one real mark came from a guest puppy. Nine weeks old, first week in the house, and I turned my back for the time it takes to fill a water bowl. He got a corner between his back teeth and left a shallow notch about the size of a grain of rice. That was my mistake, not the mat's. Nothing on this mat is built for teeth, and the corners are the part that tempts a puppy. Now every mat gets picked up the moment it is licked clean, and it has not happened again in two and a half years.

Pepper is a forty two pound cattle dog mix and a hard chewer. She has put holes in things I would have bet money on. She has never been left alone with a mat here, because I do not leave any dog alone with a food toy, and I would not start with this one. Treated as a chew toy it will lose. Treated as a ten minute job it will outlast your dog's puppyhood.

What I Put On It, and What I Stopped Putting On It

Plain yogurt is the workhorse. Canned pumpkin is the other one. Both spread thin, both rinse out of the texture, neither leaves a smell in the cupboard afterwards. Peanut butter works, but only the kind without xylitol, and it is heavy enough that you need a thinner smear than you think or the dog is finished in three minutes and looking at you again.

Loose kibble on a flat mat is a waste of time. It slides off the moment the dog's tongue touches it and ends up under the refrigerator. If I want kibble in the mix I press a few pieces into a smear of yogurt first, which is a trick I worked out for a fast eating guest beagle and now use most weeks.

What I stopped using was anything with a strong smell of its own. Wet dog food left a film in the texture that took two dishwasher cycles and a soak, and the mat smelled of it for a week. Bland is what works here, and it has a second benefit. A pale filling on a textured surface means I can see at a glance whether a mat is actually clean.

The Suction Question

The Classic has no suction cups and I want to be plain about that, because a lot of lick mats are sold on the strength of sticking to a shower wall. I tried one of those three years ago. A silicone mat with a suction cup on the back, stuck to the tub wall for bath time. Pepper had it off the wall and the cup chewed off inside the first week. It went in the bin that same week and I have not bought another one since.

What I do instead is fold a bath towel on the tile and set the flat mat on that. It grips well enough through the towel that it does not skate, and it does not need to be stuck to anything, because the dog's head is down and the feet are still. If what you want is a mat that stays put on bare tile through a determined licker, this is not that mat. If you want one that goes in the dishwasher and can be picked up and put away in two seconds, this is exactly that mat.

What It Does in a House With Guest Dogs

I usually have two or three dogs here that are not mine. Food toys are handed out one dog per mat, in separate spots, always with me in the room. That is not a LickiMat rule, that is a house rule, and it applies to the KONG Extreme and the Dog Brick just as much as it applies here. A mat is easy to place because it is flat and it does not roll into another dog's space the way a ball does.

The job it does best is the first evening. A dog dropped off for a week is wound tight, and a bowl of dinner does nothing for it. A mat with a smear of pumpkin gives the dog something to do with its face while the house settles around it. I have also used it on a guest dog that was fine with everything except a nail trim, and it did the same job there. It is not training and it does not replace a walk. It just fills a gap where a dog would otherwise be working itself up.

A thin layer you can still see the mat through takes about ten minutes to clear. A thick layer buys you four, and then the dog is looking at you again.

Who This Is For

You have a dog that needs a job while you handle it. Nail trims, a bath, ear cleaning, the first night in a new house, a hot afternoon when the walk has to be short. You want something that goes in the dishwasher, takes up four inches of cupboard space, and does not need to be assembled or charged or explained to a dog sitter. You are also fine with a tool that only works while you are standing there, because you already know that is how food toys work.

It also suits the person who already has a chew toy and a puzzle and wants the third thing for the jobs neither of those covers. Chews are for the evening. Puzzles are for a rainy morning with you sitting beside them. A mat is for the two minutes of handling that used to be a wrestling match, and it is the cheapest of the three jobs to solve, in effort if not in anything else.

Who Should Skip It

If your dog swallows soft food whole rather than licking at it, a mat is going to be a plate and you will be washing the floor. If your dog chews rubber, skip this and buy the KONG Extreme instead, because a mat is not built for teeth and never will be. And if you want something to leave down all day for a bored dog while you are at work, this is not it. Nothing here is left down. That is not a knock on the mat. It is how food toys work in a house with more than one dog in it.