Free Dog Toys From Old Clothes and Bottles

Dogs do not care what a toy cost. They care whether it moves, smells interesting, or can be destroyed. Here are the ones worth making, and the ones circulating online that cause real harm.

Six that work

• Braided tug rope. Three strips of old t-shirt or denim, plaited tight, knotted at both ends. Costs nothing, lasts surprisingly long, and tug is excellent exercise if you teach a clean release.
• Sock and bottle. An empty plastic bottle with the lid and ring removed, pushed into a long sock and knotted. The crunch is the appeal. Supervise, and bin it once the bottle cracks.
• Towel roll. Sprinkle kibble on a towel, roll it up loosely, let the dog unroll it. Ten seconds to make and it works every time.
• Muffin tin puzzle. Kibble in the cups, tennis balls on top.
• Cardboard box of newspaper. Treats hidden in scrunched newspaper inside a box. Messy, brilliant, free.
• Frozen facecloth rope for teething puppies.

Three to avoid

Tennis balls as a main chew toy. The fuzz is abrasive and grinds teeth flat over years, and a determined dog can compress and inhale one. Fine for fetch, not for lying and chewing.

Sticks. A South African classic and a common cause of serious injury — sticks splinter and impale the roof of the mouth or the throat, especially when thrown and caught vertically.

Old shoes. The problem is not the shoe, it is that you have taught the dog that leather footwear is a toy. They cannot tell your old takkie from your new one.

The supervision rule

Home-made toys are for supervised play. Anything with string, fabric strips or small parts becomes a foreign body if swallowed, and intestinal obstructions from swallowed rope and fabric are common and expensive. When a home-made toy starts coming apart, throw it away rather than getting one more day out of it.

Rotate rather than accumulate

Keep two-thirds of the toys in a cupboard and swap weekly. A toy that vanishes for ten days comes back interesting. This does more for boredom than buying new ones.