Trot Pets Snack Tray & Single Mat: High End, Functional Dishware for Your Canine Kid

The lick mat has been a staple in Tucker’s gear ever since he started going to fear-free vets. A little Kong Bacon and Cheese Spray on a lick mat kept Tucker distracted enough to allow vet techs to do their business. On occasion it was used at home to get some Proviable into his system, too. 

So when I was given an opportunity to try out the upscale Snack Tray by Trot Pets, I jumped at the chance. Being of a frugal nature, I’m used to lick mats not even being dog products: A simple silicone pot holder with ridges in the design could do the trick and cost less than ten bucks. At $30 for the Snack Tray and $35 for a single mat, I had to find out what made this special, and if it was worth the cost.

The Particulars

At just over 7.5 inches in diameter and about an inch tall, weighing in at 1.4 pounds, the Snack Tray is a hefty item. Food-grade silicone acts as the eating surface and sides, while the bottom and interior is some sort of rubber or plastic. The invisible magnet is embedded in the center divot of the bottom plastic piece (there is no way the dog can get at the magnet unless they destroy the entire tray.) This magnet matches to either the magnet stand in the single or double mat, or it can be used with the single magnet puck they provide with the Tray.

At a quarter of an inch high, the nubbins of the lick mat are a bit higher than the average lick mat’s raised protrusions, but not by much. The higher quadrants are grids of rectangular holes approximately half an inch wide by three quarters of an inch long and are half an inch deep to put pâté, dog food, or liquid in.

The single mat is just shy of 11 inches square and can hold either a Trot Bowl or this Snack Tray.

The Canine Perspective – A Puppy Tester 

Maddie, my current foster pup (only five months old) is about 35 pounds. She’s part hound so her tongue (and face) is a tad narrower than Tucker’s, but oddly, not much shorter. She’s been with me only a week, and having been dumped at the shelter at six weeks old and having only known a kennel prior to her arrival to my place, everything is new to her and she has a completely unbiased perspective.

Round 1

For our first testing session, I smashed Honest Kitchen pâté into both the lick mat and the slow feeder rectangles and topped off the rectangles with bone-shaped duck training bites from Tuesday’s Natural Dog Company. 

Even though she had never experienced a lick mat before, she understood the assignment and had no trouble with the lick portion of the Tray.

As for the rectangles, those were hard. She got most of the pâté out, but in her licking, the little bones became jammed in the bottom of the holes, so even I had a hard time getting them out. Since the holes are about the width of my finger, trying to upend and get out the soggy duck meat was like playing the board game Operation without tweezers. 

Once I flipped the little duck bone-shapes back up on their ends, her tongue jammed them back in. Ultimately, my takeaway was that small pieces are not a good idea for this portion of the Tray: She can’t get her teeth inside the rectangles to grab hold, and her tongue can’t lift them out.

In Maddie’s determination to get the pieces out, she used her teeth on the edges of the rectangles. The silicone was undamaged (not even a mark on it), but her mild handling knocked it off the magnet stand on the mat. Once off kilter, just licking caused it to fall off completely.

Round 2

With small pieces a no-go, I went for the all-liquid frozen Tray. I poured Open Farm Beef Bone Broth over the entire Tray. Because I’m sloppy, I did this with it on the mat and put the whole tray and mat into the freezer. It fit perfectly on one side of the freezer drawer of my Kitchenaid refrigerator. Only two to three hours later, it was pretty solid.

Maddie seemed to like this, but for some reason it involved having to lie down to use.

She ran into the same problem as before, though: Solids (in this case, ice chips of broth) in the slow feeder areas were unattainable due to the width of her tongue. She tried grabbing them with her front teeth and still came up empty. However, once the broth returned to liquid form, she easily lapped it up.

Round 3

No pure solids and no pure liquid, just pâté, seems to be the sweet spot for challenging but attainable food stuffs on the Tray. I didn’t smash it down hard, but enough so that it took some doing to get it up. For a dog that eats quickly, this is a great solution.

After Maddie got over wanting me to keep her company while she ate, it was the perfect 20-minute distraction for her to work on while I prepared my own afternoon snack.

The Human’s Thoughts

First, the bad news: The magnet doesn’t work as intended. Watching review videos of the steel bowls and mats together, I was disappointed that the Tray didn’t work as well as the bowls on the mat. There’s definitely some magnetism, but not enough to hold it on if a dog Maddie’s size lifts or knocks it hard in her pursuit of food. While the bowls have the additional magnetism advantage of being made out of steel, the magnet buried in the rubber or plastic bottom of the Snack Tray just isn’t enough to keep it attached against mild canine roughness.

Unlike traditional lick mats that are thin and bend easily, this has some girth and heft, which makes it a lot easier to load up and move it around without spilling or dropping it. It fits nicely in the freezer even with the tray attached. The deep rectangles are a welcome alternative to the usual maze of a slow feeder, but solids may get jammed in the holes and mid-size dogs may be unable to extract them. 

I wondered if the size of the dog made a difference in the canine experience, so I enlisted the help of a couple of my smaller canine friends.

The Canine Perspective: Gordie’s Opinion

Gordie, a former foster of mine, is a 13-pound terrier/poodle mix who, like many small dogs, is a foodie. His mom keeps a rotation of different flavors, brands, and textures on hand to be sure she has something for his particular mood each day. His mom put some chunks from his current menu (Kreation Beef and turkey burger) in the holes and on the lick mat portion in the Tray to see how he liked it.  

Gordie actually had an easier time than Maddie with picking things out of the slow feeder quandrants, since his entire tongue fits in the rectangles.

His mom said that she had tried a traditional slow feeder once, but the maze design made it easy for him to shovel it into his mouth along the track like a snowplow. She felt this was a way better design for a small dog’s slow feeder.

The Canine Perspective: Lionel’s Take

Lionel, a 20-pound Jack Russell/Chihuahua former street dog who was adopted (foster fail) by a friend of mine during the pandemic, has a much less discerning palate than Gordie. When he came over to play with Maddie, I asked for his opinion on the Tray. I put a small amount of the Honest Kitchen pâté on the Tray, and Lionel’s mom distracted Maddie, who desperately wanted to participate.

Lionel dove in and, like Gordie, has a tongue small enough to get into the rectangles. Once every molecule was off, he asked for more.

Clearly, it was a winner. He did use his teeth a little on the silicone edges, but no harm was done and he wasn’t able to knock it off the magnet. 

More Human Thoughts: Dollars and “Sense”

I asked Lionel’s mom what she would expect to pay for this product (it should be noted that she lives in the West Los Angeles/Santa Monica area of California, so her price tolerance is slighter higher than mine in the San Fernando Valley). She guessed around $24.99, but the Tray is $29.99 and the Single Mat is sold separately at $34.99. If you want a dual mat (two magnetic stands on the mat) the price is $37.49-$44.99 depending on size. The single mat is the equivalent of half the medium dual size, at 11 inches wide. 

A food-safe placemat in the same approximate size, or even bigger, with the lip (which is really what we love about it, since it contains the spillage), runs about $15-$20 online. West Paw is selling a mat with a lip for $39.99 on Chewy, but it’s significantly larger. Trot Pet’s Mat has the advantage over a lot of other mats, though, because it’s solid: Unlike flimsy silicone placemats, it doesn’t bend and dump all the food on the floor when you pick it up.

Because the Snack Tray is uniquely filling the gap between slow feeder and lick mat, there is no equivalent for price comparison. SodaPup offers both lick mats and slow feeders, at $15.99 and $21.99 respectively. However, the slow feeder eating surface isn’t made with a flexible food-grade silicone; SodaPup’s slow feeders are hard, proprietary food-grade plastic.

Trot Pets looks like it’s aiming to compete with luxury or high-quality brands like West Paw.  While the product is unique and incredibly useful, the price may be out of reach for frugal dog moms. Still, dog people are a loyal bunch and who they buy from is often just as important as what they buy. So, let’s talk about Trot Pets.

Adopting a Product and Making it Theirs

The original Trot Pets bowl and mat set was a Kickstarter campaign. In 2022, just as everyone should have been receiving their pre-orders, the company was dissolved. No one received their products and the owners of the company went MIA. Needless to say, people were pissed. In fact, people are still pissed. 

The new Trot Pets “About” section seemed suspiciously vague to me: “a group of dog lovers who were frustrated with the lack of high-quality dog bowls available on the market”. To ease my mind, I contacted the COO (so you don’t have to) to find out the full story.

The COO assured me they have zero ties to the company behind the Kickstarter campaign. The team of investors acquired the Trot Pets assets (website, instagram account, email lists, etc.) from the court liquidation sale. They believed in the product and wanted to see it live on. It was akin to them adopting a dog from the shelter: they had no contact with the original owners; they were just looking to give the dog a better life. 

And that is exactly what they’re doing with the Trot products. They relaunched in May of 2023, offering a discount to all those who had been shafted and assuring the public that they would only sell products they had on hand. 

One of the new owners was drawn to Trot Pets because she had a dog die from bloat and believes a slow feeder could have avoided the deadly situation. She wanted a product — and wanted to invest in a product — that could save lives. 

The Snack Tray is the newest addition to their product line-up with that same purpose: To provide aesthetically pleasing, functional, and safe products that can help dogs live healthier, longer lives. 

Trot Pets often donates some of their products to fundraisers for Hearts and Bones, an interstate dog rescue that pulls and transports dogs from high kill shelters in Texas to their rescue in upstate New York. With every purchase you make through Trot Pets, a portion of the proceeds will be donated directly to Hearts and Bones. Not only are they trying to save lives with their products, but they’re helping save lives of shelter animals with their business model.  

What We Didn’t Test

Researching the double-sided tape (3M 9448A) used on the puck, I opted to not stick this to anything. It’s the same type of tape used to attach your EZ Pass or other toll transponder to your windshield. That’s a pretty long-term type of tape and it’s a PITA to get off, so I opted to only go with the Tray and Mat.

I don’t own a dishwasher so I can’t say how well it holds up to that. However, hand-washing was just fine. The small rectangles pose the same issue any lick mat has — just getting into the crevices to clean it thoroughly can take some time. However, a lot of it came out by just running it under the faucet.

The Final Bark

Trot Pets’ Snack Tray is the bridge between slow feeder and lick mat. It’s a hefty product that I don’t foresee losing shape and getting destroyed from dog teeth. The magnetism feature, however, is a fail. If you already own the bowls and slow feeder, the Tray is a nice addition to mix up feeding time, but if you’re buying this solely for the magnet feature, skip it.

The Mat is essential if you’re buying the Tray as a standalone item, and holds the Tray well for smaller dogs. It keeps everything neat and tidy and prevents food from being flung around the floor. Being a firm item without any flexibility, it won’t collapse when you pick it up like a silicone placemat would. I personally wouldn’t use the Tray without some sort of placemat/food catcher/floor covering beneath it, just for ease of cleaning.

While small dogs do well with solids in the slow feeder portion (and do better with this style of slow feeder than the traditional maze), I’d stick to pâté for the dogs who can’t get their whole tongue into the rectangular holes. Even with this caveat, all three dogs enjoyed the product and recommend it. I do, too, but the price is my sticking point, as it was for the other two dog moms as well. While we like the product, we can’t see forking out $65 for the whole set. At $29.99 for the Tray, it’s a little high, but it’s substantially better quality than many slow feeders and the product provides much more than a $16 lick mat does.

The Mat is extremely expensive. One could try a workaround by buying a different mat and attaching the puck to it, but you may only be saving yourself $10-$20 and have an inferior end product.

Trot gives a 10% discount for first-time buyers on their website and if they have any sales, I’d recommend snagging one at that time. Knowing that a portion of the price goes to a rescue might make it easier to justify buying this high-end product for your pooch.

The Trot Pet Snack Tray and Mat is how Maddie gets her afternoon meal every single day. It’s an excellent product from a compassionate company — you just have to determine for yourself if it’s worth the price.