How to wash a snuffle mat

A snuffle mat is a piece of fleece that holds food. It gets dirty in a way toys do not, and most of the mats that get thrown away are thrown away because someone washed them wrong once. This is the short version of doing it right.

Every meal: shake it out

Turn the mat upside down over a bin and shake. Crumbs and dust work their way to the backing and stay there, and they are the reason a mat starts to smell long before it looks dirty. Ten seconds after every meal does more for the mat than any wash cycle.

When it actually needs washing

Wash it when you can see or smell residue, not on a schedule. For a mat used once a day with dry food, that tends to mean every week or two. If you have used anything greasy — wet food, cheese, liver paste — wash it the same day, because fat is what fleece holds on to.

The wash itself

Machine wash on the coolest gentle or wool cycle your machine offers, and follow the care label that came with your own mat. Use a normal amount of a plain detergent.

Leave out three things:

• Fabric softener. It coats fleece and flattens the strips, which is exactly the property the mat depends on.
• Bleach and stain remover. They break the fibre down, and your dog puts their face in this.
• Heat. Polar fleece is synthetic, and heat is what ruins it: it shrinks, stiffens and pills.

Put the mat in a laundry bag if you have one. It stops the strips wrapping around the drum's paddles, which is what pulls them loose.

Drying

Air dry it flat. Not on a radiator, not in a tumble dryer, not in direct summer sun on a balcony. Heat is what turns soft strips into stiff, matted clumps, and once fleece has felted it does not come back.

Flat matters as well as air. Hung over a line, a wet mat stretches under its own weight and dries into a shape that no longer sits flat on the floor. A drying rack, a towel on the floor, or the top of a laundry basket all work. Give it a day. Fleece feels dry on the surface long before the backing is.

Fluffing the strips back up

A mat out of the wash looks worse than it will be. Once it is completely dry, run your fingers through the strips in handfuls and shake it hard a few times. Most of the loft comes back. If parts stay matted, a wide-toothed comb through the worst areas will separate them.

Stuck-on food

Dried wet food does not come out in a normal cycle. Soak the affected area in cold water for twenty minutes first — cold, because hot water sets protein — then work the residue out with your fingers before washing as usual.

When to stop using it

Check the strips before each meal. A mat is finished when strips are pulling free of the backing, when the backing itself has split, or when your dog has started chewing pieces off rather than searching. Any of those makes it something a dog can swallow, and no amount of washing fixes it.