Dog Toys-R-Us

It is hard to predict which toys will catch and hold the interest of the dogs. Rudy's all time favorites are always balls and his red football that he plays with outside is the best. He also likes "lovies" that he cuddles and has particularly taken to the octopus that he got for his anniversary. He favorite toys are small, fluffy, and noisy: he love the squeakers. One of his current favorites is a tiny pink dog that, of course, I picked out for Emme. She usually wants nothing to do with it and Rudy loves it.

Emme still likes the gorilla and usually plays with a tiny brown bear or the hedgehog. She has chewed both the eyes out of the hedgehog and it lost its squeaker long ago but she loves to race around the house to pounce on it, shake it and throw it up in the air. She likes the Air Kongs but only to chew the fuzz off of them. She gets her little puppy teeth hooked in the fuzz and pulls until there are stringy things handing off the toy. Then we need to take them away for a hair cut.

The only toy that has been absolute bust is a black rubber tire toy I bought for Rudy. It is about the size of a dinner plate and is fun to roll on the floor. I enjoy it, but Rudy has never played with it. I keep it in the garage with the less loved toys and recently I brought it out of the garage to let Emme play with it and her reaction was the same as Rudy's. The tire is a no go.

Both dogs love bones. In the Daniel Pinkwater book, he recommends no bones except cow femur bones. I go to the meat department at Buehlers and have them cut off the ends of the bones and cut the middles into 4 to 6 inch sections. Then according to Pinkwater's instructions, I boil them for 20 minutes. Then I wrap and freeze them and give them out every month or so. Rudy loves them when they are fresh and have marrow in the middle but both dogs continue to chew the bones after they are months or years old. Rudy has some bones from when he first came to live with us. I only throw them out if they are getting too small or if they crack in half, which seldom happens. Emme has never had a new bone so that treat is still yet to come. She likes the old dried out ones so I am sure that she will like a marrow-filled one. Maybe for Christmas.