It’s Christmastime again and that means time for new toys and goodies for the pooches in my life (how this is different than say, a Tuesday, I dunno).
My pup has more toys than she knows what to do with (literally) but I wouldn’t be a good Puppy Mommy if I didn’t get her something to “open” on Christmas day. And also buy something for her Puppy Cousin.
I know I am not alone in this…
I want to hear about your dog’s favorite toys or edible diversions. Let’s start a handy list for everyone who needs to buy doggy gifts this year.
Age of dog
Breed and/or size of dog
One to three favorite toys/edibles - with links if possible.
My answers are:
4 years old
Large Golden Retriever
The iQube. Looooves to dig the squeaky, squishy balls out from inside the box and prance around with them.
Huge plush squeaky ball, sorta like this only fuzzier. About the size of a bowling ball. She sleeps on it, carries it around like a dead animal, and attacks it to find the hard-to-find squeaky. Sports balls with tug ropes…her absolute favoritest outside toys. Pretty much the only toy we keep outside anymore.
Well my little Alli has a few toys. She really doesn’t like any plastic toys so she has her rope and some stuffed animals, but her favorite is a stuffed rat from Ikea.
She is about 3 years
Maltese cross (I think… If you can tell from the photo let me know. I adopted her from the city pound and they just said Terrier cross.)
Well her favs are the rat, a tennis ball, and rope. She has simple tastes.
But she does goes batty over pig ears.
I have three dogs. All three of them LOVE stuffed toys, but they usually have them shredded within an hour, so I’ll tell you about their other favorites.
Sirius is a year-and-a-half old Jack Russell Terrier. His favorite toys are flavored Nylabones. They last forever.
Polaris is a two-year-old mutt of indeterminate breed. She weighs about 40 lbs. Her favorite toys are rope toys. She’ll gnaw on them for hours. Thin ropes don’t last very long, but the big thick ones will stand up to a couple of weeks of gnawing.
Bean is almost 11 years old. She’s a Norweigian Elkhound mix and is very picky about toys. She only likes edibles, like the Booda Velvet chews. She also loves peanut butter, so I stuff her Kong with it.
I have two greyhounds, ages 9 and 11. They both love soft fleece toys with squeakers or microchip voice boxes in them. If they don’t make noise, then they just don’t care about them.
Ramush, who is a 2 1/2 year old street dog from Kosovo (no one can figure out what he’s a mix of) loves stuffed hand puppets. Of course, that requires you to play also…
I adopted him a month ago so we’re just figuring out the toy thing - this thread is perfect for us!
Nylabone, rope bone, stuffed toy: not that interested, he liked them in the beginning but soon lost interest
Rawhide: lasts under an hour, he chews it up and swallows it like it’s beef jerky - his system gets a bit bunged up, but no big deal.
Kongs: he likes these, but mostly when they’re stuffed (with kibble and canned food/cheez whiz/yogurt/peanut butter) and frozen - it takes him less than two hours to empty one out so they don’t last long! Plus I don’t want him getting too fat. He’s already 70lb.
Hooves: Remains interested in these but they don’t seem to thrill him overly, they will keep him busy for a while but he doesn’t get particularly excited when I pull it out.
Question: Since he seems to be into natural-sourced things rather than synthetic, I have been looking at pig ears and sterilized bones and bull penises and so forth. I sometimes hear cautionary tales about those - “use under supervision” or “never give him XX to chew because it will flake off and puncture his heart!”
Also I had a springer spaniel growing up (as another data point, he loved the nylabone, didn’t like rawhide) and the one time we gave him an actual bone was the one time he actually truly GROWLED at us.
Do dogs like toys in general, or is it something they’re “taught” to like through positive renforcement when they play with them? My family has had four dogs (two for the short term, the others for 10-15 years) and not one of them displayed any interest in toys whatsover. Breeds: Husky-Shepard/Beagle cross; Beagle; Husky Shepard; Samoyed. None related genetically, FTR. Three of the dogs were adults when they lived with us, so maybe they missed something during their formative years. And Princess? Well, she was odd in general. She enjoyed raw carrots and never licked people.
On the other hand, my friend Colleen has a Samoyed (age 9?) and an American Eskimo (about a year) who go insane over squeaky toys. Particularly a duck model that’s mallard colored that they buy at Petsmart.
Both, I think. With some dogs, it’s a personality issue-- some dogs just aren’t particularly playful. With others, it’s because they were corrected for tearing up things when they were a puppy and never quite understood that it’s okay to shred *these *items.
A playful dog will find something to play with if they’re not offered toys. I don’t allow any dog toys in my yard because they end up getting buried and lost, so my dogs play with sticks, big leaves and whatever else they can find when they’re outside.
I did encourage my dogs to play with toys. Whenever I would catch them chewing on something of mine, I would take that object from them, offer them a toy and when they chewed on it, praised them.
Bean, my eldest, never really liked toys all that much. She completely ignored hard chews like Nylabones. She would play with her rope, but only if there was a human or another dog to play tug-of-war. The only thing she really likes are edible toys. So, i chalk her preferences up to personality, rather than anything I did.
I don’t know if it’s the favorite, but when I was a kid our dog decided a big rawhide bone was her puppy. She never chewed it, she just carried it almost everywhere with her for a while. If we tried to touch it she would growl at us and actually try to bite us.
My parents’ new dog is 9 months old. So far, his favorite chew toy seems to be my mom’s glasses. Twice in less than a week he has gotten a hold of them.
Bean went through a period like that. For her, it was a stuffed monkey. She carried it around very gently, and would lay it down beside her, almost like the monkey was nursing. She was very protective of it (but never growled or tried to bite-- I wouldn’t have stood for that.)
Kirin likes anything bigger than her head, but lately has discovered a love for (American) footballs, so long as they’re flat enough for her to grab and shake.
Bailey likes her squirrel toys, since we won’t let her play with the real ones.
“Favorite toy” is hard to classify. She has this rat…well, it’s a green cartoony looking rat, round like a soccer ball, almost as tall as she is. The thing about the rat is, she hardly ever “plays” with it, but she just likes to have it near. She’ll bring it in from other rooms when she realizes it isn’t there. She just disappears suddenly, and then she back she comes, trotting happily, with the rat dangling from her mouth. And then she’ll set it down and not play with it. It’s the funniest thing. I jokingly call it her “girlfriend”.
For toys she plays with, there are several. Mostly she likes soft toys with squeakers. She has two bone-shaped ones that she’s had for a long time. Also, her current favorite seems to be a little cow we got her, made out of tough cowhide that she can’t chew up easily. She’ll lie down and contentedly gnaw on its horns forever.
We’ve also had luck in the past with tennis balls and some hard rubber toys. Soft toys are still the favorite, though. She likes rope bones, but she’s gotten too good at untying the knots and eating the stringy bits, so she doesn’t get those anymore.
Buff cocker spaniels, they’ll be 2 at the end of January
(a) Currently, Lucy’s favority toy is a small blue rubber ball with a squeaker in it. She likes to fetch it and have you throw it, and she’ll also just lay there and chew it.
(b) Currently, Linus’s favorite thing is an old slipper that he is systematically demolishing. At this point, it’s basically a rubber sole and about half a leather toe cap.
My house sounds like this: SQEEEEEEsqeesqeesqeeesaQEEEEESQEESQEEscwksckswkSQEEEEE
Very. Periodically, I have to put the squeaky toy up or risk being driven insane. Then Lucy sits by the shelf or counter or drawer where I’ve put it and whines until I yell at her to go lie down. But she loves her blue ball so, it’s only a matter of time until I throw it back down on the floor for her.
I gave Linus a ball with a microchip in it that talked. If you threw it it would say things like Hey! What are you doing? or I’m going to get you! He went postal. It was like he had been given a 007 mission to destroy that ball and kill whatever little talking thing lived inside it. That was worth about half a day’s fun followed by weeks of singleminded obsessional ball abuse until the microchip died.
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It can be really, really annoying at times, especially if you’re trying to watch a movie or sleep. The squeaks in some of them are pretty loud.
You can, of course, remove the squeak from a toy and sew the hole shut again. Store stuffed animals may be okay, but make sure to remove any buttons or other parts which may cause the dog to choke or could bind up their guts. Toys made for infants are best for this purpose.
If you’re handy with a needle, or know someone who has a sewing machine, you can make your own stuffed toys. You can buy a pair of children’s jeans at a thrift store, cut off the legs and make two or three toys out of each leg by stuffing cotton batting into the tubes and sewing the ends shut.
You can also make toys out of socks. On occasion, I’ll buy a bag of tube socks on sale and tie firm knots in them.* The dogs LOVE to rip those up. (I think the fabric of a tube sock provides some sort of tactile pleasure to tear.)
If your dog is not a strong chewer, you can also make bones for him/her by asking for knuckle bones at the butcher counter. They usually only cost a dollar or two. Take them home and boil them for a couple of hours. Watch the dog carefully while s/he is chewing on them to make sure s/he is not breaking off chunks or splinters. (If all the’re doing is scraping off little bits–about the size of a grain of rice-- with their teeth, all should be fine.)
*Don’t use old socks of your own, or your dog may start chewing on other socks of yours.
