During the summer we spend more time outdoors playing with our dogs, and some problems may appear for this reason. It’s very common owners toss stones, balls or sticks and the dog chases and picks them up in the mouth. Most dogs enjoy this game, but it may cause problems in the following cases:

If the dog has trouble with its joints, running and jumping when chasing a toy may damage them. This is typical in old or overweight dogs. A sudden turn when running, or a big jump, may produce a broken cruciate ligament, so, in this kind of dogs, we recommend not to toss the ball or stick, but to roll it on the floor, in order to make the game a bit calmer. The animal can keep on playing but we are avoiding violent running or jumping.

Our dog loves catching objects in air (a Frisbee, for example), in a very energetic way. In this case, we can have 2 different problems: if the object is small, the dog may swallow it. This is a more common condition than it might appear, and the game may end up in a Vet practice. The other case would be when the object is big, hard or heavy, jaw joint suffers. A mouth which carries a 300 gr toy or stone during a walk, or a mouth that opens too much for catching a big toy, sooner or later it will have problems. It’s not a very serious condition, but it’s very painful, and this pain may make impossible for the dog to chew, yawn, and even bark.

What should I do for playing with my dog in a safe way? We propose in this article a lightweight, crunchy (that noise that most dogs love), and very cheap. It consists on a plastic bottle (mineral water) that we will crush a little bit, and then we put the plug. When the dog carries the bottle in its mouth, the bottle crunches. In order to protect the dog’s mouth and teeth from the plastic, we’ll put the bottle into a strong tissue bag. The ideal tissue would be denim. We have to cut a rectangle of tissue big enough to cover completely the bottle, and then we sew the tissue creating a tube. Now we sew the back end of the tube, and finally we close the front part with a Velcro, which will allow us to renew the bottle when it’s broken.

Depending on the size of the dog we can use a 1 litre bottle or a 300 cl one. The result will be an extremely light toy which will crunch when bitten. Very easy to do and cheap. Enjoy it!

Clinica Veterinaria, Calle Holanda 9, MASA Square, Gran Alacant
T: 966 698 569