Toys and Enrichment: Buying for Durability and for Boredom

Toys are bought in quantity and used selectively. Animals have play styles, and a toy that suits one style is destroyed or ignored by another. Matching the toy to the behaviour is what makes the money worthwhile.

Know the play style first

• Chewers — need durable rubber or purpose-made chew items. Soft toys last minutes.
• Shredders — enjoy destroying things. Fine, as long as the materials are safe and supervised, since shredding and swallowing are close together.
• Fetchers — need something that throws well and survives being carried.
• Tuggers — need strong rope or rubber with a good grip for both parties.
• Hunters, particularly cats — need movement, and interactive play with you rather than a toy left on the floor.

Buying one toy of each type and observing is cheaper than buying a box of one type.

Safety checks that matter

• Size relative to the animal. A toy small enough to be swallowed is the main hazard, and this changes as a puppy grows.
• Detachable parts — squeakers, eyes, ribbons, bells. These are what get swallowed.
• Hardness. Something too hard to dent with a thumbnail can fracture teeth. This is a common and expensive injury.
• String, ribbon and elastic are a serious hazard for cats specifically, because of how their tongues work — swallowed string is a veterinary emergency, not a wait-and-see.
• Inspect and retire. Toys become dangerous as they break down. A chewed toy with exposed stuffing or loose fragments should be thrown away.

Supervision is part of the safety plan for any toy that can be dismantled.

Enrichment beats quantity

Most behaviour problems blamed on the animal are boredom. Enrichment — activity that makes the animal work something out — does more than more toys.

• Food puzzles and slow feeders, which turn a meal into an activity and also slow down fast eaters.
• Scent work — hiding food and letting the animal find it. Free, and genuinely tiring for dogs.
• Vertical space and hiding places for cats, which matter more to them than toys do.
• Scratching surfaces for cats, in both vertical and horizontal forms, placed where the cat actually wants to scratch rather than where it looks tidy.
• Rotation. Putting toys away and bringing them out again makes old toys new. This is the cheapest enrichment there is.

Durability and cost

For a strong chewer, a cheap toy destroyed in an hour costs more over a year than a durable one. Look for brands that publish a durability rating and that sell replacements. Be sceptical of "indestructible" as a claim — nothing is, and the label sometimes encourages leaving an animal unsupervised with something that will eventually fail.

Before you order

Check the size guidance against your animal's actual size, not its breed. Check for detachable parts. Check the hardness on chew items. And check the return policy on toys, which is usually not available once used — so buy one before buying a set.