I bought Sydney one of these from PetSmart. It cost roughly $8.00. The one I bought is orange. It is basically just a rubber ball (made of stiff rubber) with a noise maker inside. The noise maker is a cylindrical shaped apparatus. It is held in place by the sides of the ball, and it being centered over a small hole in the "bottom" of the ball.
He has been having a great time with it. But Dad is cautious. The first day after playing with it for a few minutes the "giggler" mechanism got cocked to one side a bit. Now it does giggle quite as easily. I think I am going to save it as a special treat type of toy. Right now it is on top of the refrigerator. It will make an appearance again, but only when I can supervise.
I have only had good experiences with JW Pets products, but this one makes me a little wary. Maybe it is because the noise maker is the same one that is in the
Roly Poly.
--Bradley
My wife bought Emma a set of these keys when we first brought her home. They are cute. They look like the same kind of teething keys you would buy for a baby. They are made out of a somewhat soft rubber, with three keys on the ring.
Emma loved them. She would carry them around. Take them into her crate with her. At some point her teeth must have become too hard for them though. Small pieces started to come off of them. It didn't help that the other dogs would chew on them from time to time. Mainly Amelia. Finally bigger chunks started coming off, and we threw them away.
I would say these are great for puppies. Well puppies up until 4 or 5 months old. Watch them closely and remove the toy when pieces start coming off.
Here is a
link to the keys on the Nylabone site.
--Bradley
Last weekend we bought Sydney an Orka Jack. It cost in the neighborhood of $13 (after tax). The Orka Jack is made of blue rubber. It literally looks like a jack (remember those?) and has places where you can fill it with treats if you want to. It looked like it would make a fun fetch toy as well, and I am positive it would have.
However, we gave it to Sydney and within two hours he chewed off one of the jacks. Needless to say I was disappointed.
The next day I sent the company (PetStages) and email announcing my displeasure. Nicely. A couple of days later, I received a reply from Petstages offering to replace the toy or give me a refund. This was more than I expected, and to be honest, I am quite happy with their response.
Below is a copy of the email they sent to me....
Bradley,
Thank you for your message and purchase of Petstages products. We are sorry the Orka Jack did not perform to your expectations. Our goal at Petstages is to design products that are both interesting and beneficial to pets, while being safe and durable. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our products and your input is very helpful. While no product is indestructible we stand behind the quality of products and are happy to refund your money or replace it with another Petstages item. Please return the remaining product, package, and receipt to the address below and request a refund or replacement. We appreciate you trying Petstages products and hope you will consider our items for future purchases.
Best Regards,
Petstages Customer Service
edit:
Here are the pictures of what Sydney was able to do in just a short amount of time...
This is a dumbell shaped toy made out of rubber. The ends have these little spikes all around them. The toy is made by JW Pet. So far all of the toys we have tried made by this company have been of really good quality.
My wife bought this for Amelia, but Amelia is a little toy shy sometimes. Sydney played with it a little bit, and then we took it away from him and hope to get Amelia to play with it soon. The only weakness Sydney found was that the little spikes are easily bitten off. Well not super easy, but easy enough for him. He got made 5 or 6 of them off in the time he was playing with it.
Seems like it will be a good toy, but only time will tell. I will post back after we have had the toy for while.
--Bradley
My wife bought Sydney an evil Cuz in the large size this weekend. We had heard that the feet were harder to chew off of these. Well, Sydney had the feet chewed off in about an hour. I think he could have gotten them off sooner, but he didn't really apply himself to the job for a little while.
So far it is holding up like a champ, sans feet of course. I have thrown it for him about a billion times this weekend.
Quite expensive toy, but well worth the money.
--Bradley
This covers rope toys in general. We have tried several different rope toys, but by no means all rope toys. Your experiences with this type of toy may be greatly different from ours.
We discontinued rope toys well before we adopted Sydney. We bought several different rope toys for Amelia. She loved them. However, her main mission was to untie the knot and then eat the strings.
At the time we were novice dog owners. So we let her play with these toys unsupervised. She would untie the knots eat some of the string. We kept seeing the string in her poops, but at first didn't think anything about it. Finally, it occurred to us that this may eventually cause some intestinal problems. That day, we threw out all the rope toys that were left, and have not bought any since.
At the very least, I would recommend strick supervision if you decide to buy rope toys for your dog.
--Bradley
These toys are made by Mammoth Pet Products. More information can be found here....
http://www.mammothpet.com/
We bought two of these in medium size. They are great for playing fetch with, and the dogs liked chewing on them. Be careful playing fetch in the house though. The tires will definitely mark walls. We still have several black marks on the walls from them. They were great outside though. You can roll them or throw them. Sydney really liked chasing it when you rolled it. You can play tug with these too, but it is easy for your dog to mistakenly bite your fingers if you aren't really careful.
We had these toys for about 3-4 months. I suppose Sydney found the weakness, because he killed both of them within a day or so of each other. According to their web site, they make one for more aggressive chewers. So that may be applicable if your dog easily destroys his toys.
I would definitely recommend these toys. However, I would only let our dogs play with them while under supervision. Once Sydney ripped into them, he could easily tear off small pieces. I would be afraid he could/would swallow these pieces if we had not been there to take the toy away once he tore it.
--Bradley
This toy is made by Booda. More information can be found
here
I can not in anyway endorse this toy.
We bought two of them from PetSmart. One for each dog. They are neat looking toys. This one kind of looks like a jack. It makes a weird noise when shaken too. We really thought the dogs would love them. Plus they were supposed to be designed for aggressive chewers. This quote is taken directly from their web site.... "These toys are virtually indistructable so they can take as much wild fun as your dog can dish out. Quirkies are made with safe, all natural rubber and non-toxic materials."
Withing 2.5 hours, Sydney had bitten the end off of both toys. We were watching him the whole time, and thought we got all the pieces before he could swallow them. We were wrong. The next day Sydney was very sick. It took him a few days plus a vet visit to recover. Thankfully, the piece he swallowed passed through his system even though it was a somewhat large piece. I found the piece a few days later when I was doing poop patrol in the back yard. It was about 1.5" in diameter.
Please be very careful if you decide to give one of these to your pet. I would not recommend these for even non-aggressive chewers.
--Bradley
This is also made by JW Pet (www.jwpet.com). We have had our chain for several months now (at least 6 months). There are a couple of puncture wounds in it, but that is not affecting its strength or durability.
Sydney loves it. Though he has lost a little interest in it, but that is entirely my fault. The thing is so tough that when he tugs on it, it makes my shoulder hurt. So if my shoulder is already hurting, I won't play with him.
Otherwise, it is a great toy and well worth the price especially if you have a dog that loves to play tug.
edit: 12/31/06
Today Sydney finally destroyed the chain. He tore the middle link into two pieces. We let him play with the other two rings, and a little later he tore one of them into two. So far the third ring is still intact and he is playing with it.
edit2: 1/1/07
Well Sydney finally finished destroying the chain. I guess once he finds the weak spot the toy is pretty much done for. Oh well. It was a good toy and lasted quite a while.
edit3: 2/13/08
We bought another one of the chains. Sydney and Emma are constantly tugging with one another for different toys. I hope this can satisfy their tugging desires!
--Bradley
This is a ball of sorts. It is great for indoor fetch. Our dogs liked it but didn't love it.
It held up pretty well, but eventually Sydney found its weekness and killed the darn thing.
This product is also made by JW Pet (www.jwpet.com).
