Busy Buddy Tug-A-Jug

A friend's mom found this toy for their new puppy and it seemed to get great reviews from them so I bought one for Louie. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to our expectations.

The product description online: "Ultimate interactive toy allows your pet to see treats, smell treats and hear treats. The textured rubber wrap serves as a chew toy and cleans teeth. Made with non-toxic bullet-proof material."

It is made of a very hard plastic, with the 'cap' of the bottle made of a soft rubber and a rubber rope pull running through it. The bottom unscrews and you fill the bottle with small enough treats to come out the top opening, around the rope. The flaw is that the rope pull is such bad quality that even if I bent it in half, it would've snapped. So Louie had no trouble destroying that part within 5 seconds of playing with it. It still took him some time to get his treats out and kept him occupied for awhile. Once he figured out where the treats were coming from, he chewed the spiky cap off, which didn't affect the dispensing of treats. What did ultimately damage the toy was when he cracked and broke the plastic neck of the bottle, and eventually the screw-on bottom.

On top of the poor rubber quality, the other problem with this product is that the company markets it differently online and in-store. Pictures online show the toy with a cloth rope instead of the rubber one shown online. After reading some customer reviews, they claim that they were sent the rubber rope version instead of the cloth one shown. Many reviewers also had an issue with the rope pull being easily broken. I will give credit to those who improvised and used other objects as an obstacle.

All things considered, the toy is a wonderful idea. The improvements need to come in the way of more durable rubber parts and a realistic product picture/description for online purchases. I am contemplating buying a smaller version (since the bottle is really big) and taking the rope out and replacing it with a ping-pong ball to act as an obstacle instead. It probably won't solve the problem of him chewing the spiky part off, but I think it will still keep him occupied.

I bought this toy at Target for $11.99 but there are lots of websites which sell it. I found the reviews on amazon.com. The company (Busy Buddy) has other products which promote interactive, independent activity so I'll see about testing other products of theirs.