LickiMat Classic Soother vs a silicone suction cup lick mat: Which One Earns Its Shelf Space

Three years ago I bought two lick mats in the same week because I could not make up my mind. One was the LICKIMAT Classic Soother, a flat rubber mat about eight inches square. The other was a silicone mat with suction cups on the back, the kind sold for sticking to a bathtub wall. The silicone one was in my bin inside eight days. The LICKIMAT is still in the drawer next to my sink, and I own two of them now. That is the short answer. The longer one is below, and it matters most if your dog is the sort that gets bored and starts looking for something to take apart.

I look after other people's dogs in my home in Tehachapi, usually two or three at a time, and I have a cattle dog mix of my own called Pepper. She is six, forty two pounds, and she shreds anything flimsy, so toys get judged in this house on whether they survive her. Lick mats do two jobs here and neither of them is entertainment on a quiet Tuesday. They are for bath and nail time, and they are for the first evening a nervous guest dog spends on my kitchen floor. Those two jobs turned out to want two different mats, which is how I ended up buying both.

	LickiMat Classic Soother	Silicone suction cup lick mat
Material	Rubber, 3.35 ounces, holds its shape on the floor	Soft silicone that flexes under a tongue
How it stays put	No suction anywhere. It sits flat on a towel on the tile	Suction cups grip a smooth wet wall or tile
Bath time with a standing dog	Has to sit on the tub floor or be held by hand	Sticks at nose height, which is where the dog wants it
Surface texture	Soother pattern of ridges and pockets holds a thin smear	Shallow texture on the one I bought, so a thick dollop sits on top
Cleaning	Top rack dishwasher, machine wash per the care instructions	Food and water collect in the cup recesses
Storage	7.87 inches square, 0.28 inch thick, stacks flat in a drawer	Bulkier with the cup bases on the back
Hard chewer in the house	One small corner mark in three years of guest dogs	Pulled off the wall and the cup chewed in week one
First evening with a nervous guest	Goes down anywhere on the floor, no wall needed	Needs a smooth clean surface to grip

What Each Mat Actually Is

The Classic Soother is a rubber placemat and LICKIMAT is straightforward about what that means. The listing gives it as 7.87 inches by 7.87 inches, 0.28 inch thick, 3.35 ounces, one piece, with care instructions of machine wash and a note that it is dishwasher safe. Soother is the name of the surface pattern, a field of ridges and pockets that holds a thin smear of food so a dog has to work at it with its tongue instead of scooping it up in one pass. There is no suction on it. It is a mat you set down on something flat.

The suction cup mat goes at the problem from the other end. The silicone is softer and more flexible than rubber, and the back carries a row of cups you press onto a smooth wet surface to hold it in place. The idea is that the mat lives on the wall of the tub at nose height, so a dog being bathed has something to lick and nobody has to kneel there holding a mat down with one hand. On paper that is a better answer for bath time than a flat mat can give you. In my bathroom it lasted eight days.

How These Two Got Used in My House

Bath time here is Pepper in the tub, warm water, and a smear of peanut butter with no xylitol in it. The first night with the suction mat, it did exactly what it said it would. She licked, I washed, nobody fought. The second night she got a front paw up on the rim, worked her nose under the edge of the mat, and peeled the whole thing off the wall. By the third night she had one of the cups in her teeth and I had a torn piece of silicone in my hand. It went out that week and I have not bought another.

Before I gave up on it I tried two other arrangements. I pressed it onto the flat bottom of the tub instead of the wall, and she simply stood on it, which defeated the whole point. Then I held the top edge down with my free hand while I soaped her with the other, and that lasted about a minute before I admitted I was doing the same job a mat on a towel could do. The wall was the one place it made sense, and the wall was the one place she could reach.

The LICKIMAT took over that job and does it differently. I spread a thin layer of plain yogurt or canned pumpkin on it, set it on a folded towel on the tile beside the tub, and she licks while I do her nails. About ten minutes of work for her, closer to twenty if I freeze it flat first. It helped at the very first nail trim, three years ago, and it still helps now, which is more than I can say for most of what I have bought for this dog.

The second job is the nervous guest. When a dog arrives here for the week and does not know the house yet, a mat with something good on it gives them a reason to lie down in one spot instead of pacing the hallway. Food toys in this house are always supervised and always given in separate spots, one dog per toy, so nobody guards and nobody steals. That rule makes a mat with no suction easier to live with. I can put it down anywhere on the floor with no wall required.

Where LickiMat Wins

The plain reason it wins is that it is still here. Three years, two mats, one small chew mark on the corner of one of them from a guest puppy who got to it before I did. No chunks missing, no split edges, no smell that survived a wash. The silicone mat did not make it through a single week. Now, a flat rubber mat left alone with a determined chewer is not going to win that fight either, and that guest puppy proved it. The difference is that the LICKIMAT gives you a warning first. It marks before it fails, so you have time to pick it up.

The Soother texture is doing more work than I expected. A thin smear pressed into those pockets takes a dog ten minutes of real licking. The same amount of yogurt in a bowl takes about forty seconds. The clearest test was a Tuesday in February, when a young lab was staying the week and would not settle. I put a thin smear of canned pumpkin on one mat, set it by the back door, and she lay down with it between her paws and worked at it for ten minutes by the clock on the stove. Then she slept on the porch for an hour. LICKIMAT says the licking action is good for saliva and dental health and that trainers use it to settle a dog, and I am not going to pretend I can measure any of that in my kitchen. What I can tell you is that a dog working at a textured mat is quiet, and quiet at seven in the evening is what I am buying.

It also cleans up in a way the silicone mat never did. The cups on the back of that one trapped water and bits of food in the recesses and I was digging at them with a bottle brush. The LICKIMAT goes on the top rack of the dishwasher, and the care instructions say machine wash if you would rather do it by hand. It weighs 3.35 ounces and it is 0.28 inch thick, so two of them stack flat in a drawer. That sounds like a small thing until you have owned a mat that does not.

Eight days for the suction cup mat. Three years and one small corner mark for the LICKIMAT. That is the whole comparison in two numbers.

Where a Silicone Suction Cup Mat Wins

I will say plainly where it beats what I own, which is the wall. A flat mat cannot sit at nose height on the side of a tub. A suction cup mat can, and if you have a dog that stands still in the water and licks while you work, that is a real advantage and my story about Pepper does not cancel it out. She is a cattle dog mix with opinions about being handled. A calm dog that holds still plus a smooth tub wall is the setup this thing was designed for, and in that setup it does the job better than anything you can set on the floor.

The softer silicone has something to recommend it too. It flexes under a tongue in a way rubber does not, and some dogs seem to prefer licking something that gives a little. When the cups hold, they hold well, which saves you a hand and saves your back during a bath. The catch is the surface. Cups need smooth, clean and wet. Tile grout, a textured tub floor, or a dog that pulls instead of licking will beat them. Mine did, in under a week, and I am not the only person I know who has thrown one out with the cup missing.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the LICKIMAT if the job is a dog licking on the floor. Nail trims, a nervous guest's first evening, a hot afternoon on the porch, a bath where the dog stands on a towel instead of against the wall. Buy it if you want one thing that goes in the dishwasher, stacks in a drawer, and is still there in three years. Buy it if there is a chewer in the house and you are honest with yourself about supervising, because no mat survives a bored dog left alone with it, this one included.

Size is worth a thought before you order. At 7.87 inches square the Soother is about a hand's width across, which suits Pepper at forty two pounds and suits a guest beagle just as well, but a very big dog will clear one in a couple of passes. That is the argument for buying two and keeping one in the freezer.

Buy the silicone suction cup mat if bath time is the entire reason you are shopping and your dog stands still in the water. With a smooth tub wall and a dog that licks rather than pulls, the cups will do what a flat mat cannot, and the thing will earn its place on the wall. Just go in knowing the failure mode. When the cups let go, the cup itself becomes the chew toy, and that is exactly what happened here. It is also why I did not replace it.

The One Habit That Keeps Either Mat Alive

Whichever you buy, the habit matters more than the mat. Thin layer, not a dollop. A thick scoop of peanut butter on any mat turns into five minutes of gulping and then a dog staring at you for a refill. Spread it thin with the back of a spoon and press it down into the texture, and the same amount of food lasts several times as long. That single change is the difference between a ten minute mat and a two minute one. I got that wrong the first time. I filled a mat to the rim with yogurt, froze it flat overnight, and set it down expecting half an hour of peace. The top layer came off in about four minutes and then she sat watching it thaw. Now I freeze a thin layer, one I have pressed into the pockets, and it runs closer to twenty minutes.

Then pick it up the moment it is clean. Every mat in this house gets lifted as soon as the food is gone, because the gap between licking and chewing is about four seconds for a dog like Pepper. Separate spots, one dog per mat, and no dog left alone with any of it. That is not a knock on either product. It is just how food toys work in a house with more than one dog in it, and it is why the one small chew mark on my older mat is the only damage the LICKIMAT has taken.