Pet Product Review - 'Indestructible' Dog Toys

Jun 7th 2010

If your dog is anything like my dog, Pippi (featured every week in The Doggie Diaries), the only thing it loves more than a new toy is immediately ripping it to shreds. When you've got a high-energy canine who likes to give her jaws a workout, you want toys that are built to last. Here, we put five "tough" products to the Pippi test.

The Ball: The Orbee-Tuff Woof Ball by Planet Dog ($11.95, picture above) was Pippi's absolute favorite toy of those we sampled. I'm not sure what it is made out of exactly, but it's about the size of a baseball and smells like mint. It bounces like a tennis ball but is a whole lot more durable. Despite having played with it constantly for weeks, Pippi hasn't damaged hers one bit.

The Treat Toy: Vibram's Acorn treat/throw toy ($13.95) is an intriguing, six-inch, rubberized goodie-receptacle. It's shaped like an acorn but functions like a piggy bank in reverse. You screw off the "cap" and insert treats, and then your dog tries to shake the treats out of the toy through a slot at the bottom. The toy is durable, although Pippi outsmarted it and got the cap off -- and thus her paws on the loot -- fairly quickly.

The Tug-of-War Toy: Playing with Ruff Dawg's Super Tug ($12.99) is a good way for your dog to get its ya-yas out. The Super Tug is about nine inches square, comes in a variety of colors, and is shaped sort of like a clover. Pippi got wild when we played tug-of-war with this toy, and began uncharacteristically growling. It is billed as "indestructible," but she destroyed it within a week or so.