The first thing we do when we bring a dog home, whether it be a puppy or an older pup, is buy everything that we think that they might need, including toys! All dogs need toys, right?? The answer might surprise you! Play, is indeed a very important part of development and helping a dog acclimate to their brand new environment. However, toys need to be matched to the size and type of dog, including the propensities that they may have, and it is our job to keep them safe. (More on toys that are safe when not being supervised in our next post!!) You might be wondering, why you should need to keep your dog safe from their toys??

Squeaky toys and rope toys are some of the most common things that we like to buy for our pups. I am personally not a fan of squeaky toys, as they can drive pups crazy, sounding like an injured animal and encouraging them to “kill it”! Rope toys are great, but only if they are used for interactions between humans and their pups! They are not safe for chewing, or solo play.

How many of you have watched while your puppy murders it’s helpless stuffed animal? We are amused/horrified as they rip it open, remove all the stuffing, locate the squealing squeaker, only to chomp it repeatedly until it gives up the good fight, and dies… Or we come home to a rope toy that has been meticulously unraveled, and the pieces are strewn all over the room!

These are clear indicators that our pups have the desire to destroy toys, and they should only have access to them while being supervised. You might be thinking… My pup has done this for years, what’s the problem? I even have customers come to the store and buy a toy, only to tell me that their pup is going to destroy it!

The problem is that it isn’t a problem until it is.

I have a client that has been coming into my store since the first week that we opened. Together, we have worked to help his 5 year old pup live his best life! Imagine my horror, when I get a message, that the pup is in the hospital with a bowel obstruction! We were both baffled, as this pup does not have a history of eating random things.

I picked the owners brain about the events of the last week, or so. Was anything different or out of the ordinary?….. and BINGO! The owner had gotten sick the weekend before, and ended up spending the night in the hospital. The pup was left with someone that he knew, but this person had never cared for the pup before. The owner didn’t see anything amiss when he returned, but the pup started throwing up not too long after. The vomiting and general malaise is what prompted the owner to take the pup first to the vet, and ultimately to the emergency hospital. When the hospital called, after surgery, they reported that the blockage was rope strings. With this information, and upon closer investigation, it looked like the rope toy that this pup had access to for years, was looser and had strings missing. Apparently the pup passed the time while his owner was in the hospital, meticulously pulling strings out of a very old rope toy! Fortunately for the pup, he pulled through the surgery with flying colors, and is now on the mend! With a bland diet and some rest, he will make a full recovery. The owner, who loves his dog to pieces, learned the hard way that free access to toys can be very traumatic, not to mention quite expensive!

My sweet Renzo was a toy annihilator! I learned when he was a baby puppy that he LOVED to murder his toys! His eyes would glaze over once he got ahold of the squeaker, and he was not satisfied until it was completely dead! He never showed any interest in eating any of the pieces, so while I didn’t usually give him things to destroy, I wasn’t overly concerned that he would actually ingest anything that he shouldn’t…… Until he did! One day, when he was about a year old, my Mom left a small squeaky toy in her Yorkie’s bed when she came to visit. I didn’t notice, but Renzo did, and he stole it, and ate it!! I watched him steal it, and I made the amateur mistake of chasing and wrestled him for the toy, while he swallowed it whole!! He won, kind of…..

I also learned this lesson the hard way, however Renzo vomited the toy a couple of days later, so I got lucky that it didn’t result in a hospital stay!

So in conclusion, even if your dog has not shown interest in tearing up, de squeaking, or destroying their toys, doesn’t necessarily mean that they never will. When our pups are bored or stressed, or even worse, bored and stressed, they will often look for things to pass the time and keep them occupied. More often than not, they will resort to activities that are destructive or just plain dangerous! I prefer the better safe than sorry approach, so I always recommend that owners put toys away when the pup cannot be supervised. The bonus to this is that those toys that your pup will become bored with, when they have free access, will maintain their high value status when they DON’T have free access to them!!