Dog Toy - My Dogs' Favorite Toys

It can sometimes be challenging to keep your dog engaged and well exercised. And we all know that when left to find their own "entertainment", a dog will come up with many ingenious ways to cause great property damage.

Investing in some dog toys will make everyone happier, and ultimately save you a lot more money.

Below are a list of dog toys that my dogs enjoy most. To keep your dog's interest in his toys, you may want to cycle through different toys, each day of the week.

Note that the following descriptions are only based on my experiences with the toys. Different dogs have different temperaments and will have different responses to a dog toy.

Supervise your dog, whenever you give him a new dog toy. Consult your vet if there are safety concerns.

One of the best classes of toys for dogs are interactive food toys.

My dogs spend the most time on their interactive food toys, because they are always trying to figure out the fastest, most efficient way to get at the food.

Some of their favorite interactive food toys include Kongs, the Premier Busy Buddy toys, the Buster Cube, and much more. Here is a full list of their best interactive food toys.

When presented with a plush toy, my dog will totally shred it, usually in a matter of minutes.

Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to supervise plush toy use, and only allow tug-of-war or fetch games with them. No chewing should be allowed in case your dog swallows the squeaker or other plastic parts in the toy.

My dog prefers to play tug with plush toys compared to tug ropes, and rubber tug toys. Plush toys squeak, rattle, are easy on the mouth, and are easy to grip. His favorite soft toys include Dr. Noy's Dog Toy. Kyjen's Extreme Bungee Duck Toy, and the Egg Babies Hedgehog.

For the Egg Babies Hedgehog I remove the squeaky eggs because they are too distracting, and my Shiba Inu cannot resist chewing on them. Instead I put in a chew-safe ball. Then I put some kibble under the ball and let my dogs figure out how to get the kibble out.

I do not play tug with my Shiba Inu because he gets too excited and reactive, even with stringent tug rules.

My dog is an extremely strong chewer so it is difficult to find good, safe, chew toys for him.

Strong rubber toys, (e.g. Kong Rubber Toys, Nylabone Rhino Rope Toy, TireBiter), seem to be most appropriate. You will still need to check these dog toys from time to time to make sure they maintain structural integrity.

For instance, my Shiba Inu can get fairly large pieces off the TireBiter dog toy, from time to time, but he doesn't show any interest in swallowing them. It is important to supervise when you give a new chew toy to your dog to make sure he is not swallowing the pieces that he chews off.

Shiba Inu Sephy used to love to chew on deer antlers. He found a deer antler, one day, while hiking in the hills around our house. He proudly carried it home and had great fun chewing on it.

Since then, we have always kept our eyes open for new antlers, but have not found too many. We decided to buy some from AntlerZ. My Shiba Inu really loved these antlers but he cracked one of his pre-molars while chewing on this dog toy. It was cracked so badly that we were unable to save the tooth with a root canal and it had to be extracted.

The dental specialist told us not to give any compressed chewing toys (toys that are hard, with no give) to our dog. These include processed antlers, processed bones, compressed rawhide, hooves, and Nylabone non-edible chews. Note that, before this, I have given non-edible Nylabones to my Shiba Inu for about 1 year with no problems. However, I have stopped giving them to him. Why take the chance?

Rawhide, especially, is not a good chew toy for dogs.

Many dogs can tear off fairly large chunks of the rawhide, and if swallowed, these chunks may become a choking hazard. They may also block the digestive system and cause infection. Rawhide pieces may absorb water and expand in your dog's stomach; causing further digestive problems.

My dogs (a Shiba Inu and a Siberian Husky) don't generally do fetch.

They may fetch a couple of balls and actually bring it back to me, but they quickly get bored thereafter. The same goes for frisbees.

In terms of ball games, my dogs seem to enjoy soccer a lot more than fetch. They are most interested in balls that make noise including squeaky balls (Air Kong Dog Squeaker Tennis Ball) and the Multipet Wiggly Giggly Ball.

Cardboard Box

My dog loves cardboard boxes.

He will tear a cardboard box apart to get to the food or toy I put inside it. Then, he will shred the box some more. This simple, and free "dog toy", can be good mental exercise for your dog, because he will be challenged to figure out how to get to the food inside, in the fastest possible way.

Afterward, he can indulge his shredding instinct to his heart's content. The only downside is the little pieces of cardboard pieces around afterwards. But that is a small price to pay.

My dog also loves shredding paper and it is simple to hide some food in a ball of paper, and let him go at it.

Make sure that your dog is not interested in eating the cardboard or paper. If your dog loves the taste of cardboard, then this dog toy is not for you. The cardboard can be a choking hazard, and is bad for the digestive system.

Laundry Basket

This game works with any light (not heavy) basket or container. Just put your dog's favorite toy and some treats under the basket and let him figure out how to get to it.

Make sure there are no sharp edges and the container is non-toxic. If your dog is uninterested, make sure he knows there is good stuff under the basket. It is best to start with a smaller basket that is easier to lift or that may easily be knocked over.

Your dog can then slowly graduate to larger containers.

Kyjen has a line of interesting interactive toys including the I-Qube.

I hide food in soft toys and then put them in the I-Qube for my dog to work on. You can also put some food toys in the I-Qube so that your dog has to fish it out before working on the toy.

When I first got the I-Qube, my Shiba Inu chewed-on and destroyed the soft cube in under 1 minute. As stated above, soft or plush dog toys are not suitable for dogs unless they are closely supervised.

I have since discovered that putting food in the I-Qube dog toy, instead of the squeaky balls that it comes with, helps to refocus my dog. He will work at getting the food first rather than chewing at the I-Qube. I remove the I-Qube once he gets all the food out.

Amazon often has some super discounts on dog toys. These discounts are a great way to save money while buying toys for your dogs.

Toys are unlike food and grooming products, because there are usually a wide range of good quality dog toys to choose from, and they do not need to be bought on a fixed schedule.

For example, here are some 50%-70% dog toys at Amazon. You may want to join Amazon Prime to save on shipping and handling costs.