DIY Dog Toys

JBB Dog Training

James B Barnes
2.16.19   7:50p


Last week we talked about keeping your pup mentally engaged in order to prevent household destruction. This post is going to be a little how-to on creating some inexpensive puzzle toys out of items you probably already have in your home. While there's nothing wrong with store bought puzzle toys, I feel that there's something deeply satisfying about seeing your sweet lil pup have a ball playing with something you made yourself.


Items you'll need:
-a plastic bottle sized so your pup can paw and spin it
-a shoelace or long string that wont tear with lots of spinning and rubbing
-a marker to draw squares on the bottle
-scissors or something to poke holes and cut squares of plastic out
-nail file
-chop stick or a kebob stick
-chair legs or two items one shoelace length apart
-a good book
-water (for you)


Take the plastic bottle and place it on a clear, steady surface. Next, use the marker to draw on treat-sized squares. Keep in mind that the squares will be cut out so the more you have the easier it will be for your dog to get them out; the goal is to keep them mentally stimulated so they learn and get smarter. Make sure not to cut your fingers off here! Grab the scissors and cut out your squares, then use the nail file to soften those edges. The last thing we need is someone scraping up their nose or paws. Get your scissors again and poke a hole in the lid and then the bottom of the bottle.


Using the chopstick, feed the shoelace or string through the holes. When I did this I had a soda bottle and kept the lid off so I didn't have to try and get the string through the second tiny hole. Now that you've got the bottle stringed through, tie each end to the legs of the chosen chair. If you've got big dogs maybe weigh down the chair with a few bags of dog food or a child if you've got one to spare for the occasion. Now for the final step. Get your bag of treats and funnel them into your brand spankin' new rolling puzzling toy!


Some dogs take to it right away and don't need any help figuring out how to make the treats come out but if your pup is anything like mine they'll need a little instruction. The way I did that was by pointing at it, my index finger just barely not touching it. My dogs would come over and sniff at my hand, then find the treat bottle. One retriever is a Give Paw fiend so when he doesn't know what to do he throws out Old Reliable, AKA, his right paw. Said paw hit the bottle and made it spin and from there it was Treat City, Population Dan and Leery. cha-ching!! If your dog doesn't have that Paw First reaction try sitting in the chair and ignoring them. This will make them disinterested with you, but it should keep them in the area of the treats got them to want to sniff around at it. Dogs primarily live the world through their nose.


Once you've got their intense focus on it, it's just a matter of time before they jostle it around enough for a treat to fall out. Make sure not to get up and divert their attention, they need to think it through themselves. It will take a while, so this is when you break out the book! Settle in, but stay hydrated. If they aren't satisfied by how quickly the treats are coming out and walk away for more than a few minutes it would probably be a good idea to put a few more squares in the bottle and increase the rate of reward. You'll go through more treats this way but it keeps them engaged.


With my dogs I put two squares in the bottle to challenge them. They aren't fans of the difficulty but they don't stop until its empty so I think we know who the real winner is here. Sigh. It's them, they're always the winners. But we love them and that's why we do projects like these.