T3i: Recent Analyses

Terrier Toy Testing Institute (T3i) ran some new benchmarking experiments yesterday.

Our first item: the "knotted" plush bear. It has a plush exterior but inside it's a series of knotted ropes plus a squeaker somewhere in the middle of it. I thought it might be a good choice for Harry. The old man is no longer allowed to chase thrown toys or balls (he hasn't shown any soreness in his left shoulder since I made this a hard and fast rule) but he loves to tug! Between them, he and Azza will wear me out with the tugging. I never bothered to teach Harry a toy release command, or rather, I never really enforced it. The only finesse I put on his toy release was to exchange his tennis ball for a fleece tug when we played flyball. He would drop the tug on his own when we lined up to race again. My, my, but Harry lived for that game! We've dropped the ball and the fly parts of our games but the tugging is still there. 

You will tug with me NOW! That's a darned intense stare for a 15 1/2 year old terrier!

 Anyway, T3i is going to have to give this one a solid 8 out of 10, despite the fact that one of the front arms ripped partly loose during our first session with it. The hind legs are sewn on much more firmly so I make sure that I grab those instead. Harry holds the thing by the chest, the strongest part of it. It has a nice mouth feel for him since the ropes aren't too big or stiff and it's covered in soft plush. The only stuffing I can detect is in the head. Azza is a big one for chewing off faces and removing head stuffing so this toy is kept in the reserve pile in a basket on a shelf.

Our second item is the giant, green, honking spider. Iz had one of these many years ago. It must be a small feisty dog thing--Mimi also loves enormous plush toys. She spent almost 15 minutes shaking the bejeebus out of it. She was shaking it so hard that she would lift off the ground. She'd snatch its flabby body out of the air if I managed to get it away from her and throw it. Mimi has some hellacious teeth and already the honker is becoming fainter as she punches holes in the honk bag. Still, if I can keep this one away from Azza, it should last for a while. It's too delicate to be good for tugging, and since it isn't a toy I can offer to any of the dogs except Mimi, I'll have to give this a 5 out of 10. 

Kill! Kill!

In that pet store run, I also got Azza a new supertough Nylabone chew (she prefers the "original" flavored ones; I have no idea what "original" flavor is based on). She buzzsaws her way through them in a month or so but it redirects her from doing more destructive chewing when she gets bored or worried. Sorry, no photo. T3i would have to give these things a 10 just because they perform exactly as advertised.