Georgy's big so her toys are big. I often pick up stuffed animals at Goodwill for her since she eventually winds up ripping them apart. I do a lot of stuffed animal mending. She also has "doggie" toys with squeekies but those are the ones that get ripped up firstâ¦.she pulls the squeekies out. I generally buy what I think is cute. LOL She has a big red Elmo and a bright green frog. She doesn't gravitate toward them at all. They are usually the last things she drags out. I see the Teddy bears (light colored) more often. My job every night is to pick up about a dozen animals and put them back in her basket. Her job is to drag them back out.

Interesting article about color

Here is a link that might be useful: Canine perception of color

I buy them sqeaky toys. The squeakers eventually all stop working and they come apart. They are getting older, so don't play as much anymore (the dogs, not the toys)

My dog has yellow and orange Kong squeaky balls and she much prefers the orange for some reason. The orange kong ball is her favorite toy even all torn up and half bald...HAHA!

I pick the toy based on feathers. I have cats. One loves to play with them, the other likes to hunt them. The toy we bought the hunter most recently, looks like a mouseafishabird. It's funny looking. It has a mouse face with a fish fin or two, and then feathers on it. Feather toys, and strings. No color necessary, and any type from a shoelace to a hair ribbon. But, the hunter is terrified of the green feather. His pupils will dialate, he hisses at it, and, he will tear it up if he gets his claws on it. That one, stays locked in my closet and the other cat plays happily with it when my bedroom door is shut, while the other cat is on the other side of the house in the boy's room. I can't, for the life of me, figure out why he hates it so much. I have never done anything but dangled it in front of him? Oh, I forgot, boxes. Doesn't matter the size, much less the color. Just whatever can be entered and protected, later to be torn to shreds.

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photo added to show one of her feather toys (she's the playing cat). Just remembered it on the 30th.

This post was edited by rob333 on Wed, Jul 30, 14 at 16:32

New tennis balls every Christmas and birthday, and other times as needed. The favorite "Jolly Ball" is replaced every three years or so.

Sam has a "Big Tire" about 12" across that is one of his favorite toys.

Every room in the house has a tennis ball or two tucked away for emergency play.

Sam's first tennis ball.

Caroline - What a gorgeous picture of your beautiful pup!

My Sheltie loves his Kong 'tennis' balls. They're very sturdy, bit larger than a regulation tennis ball, which has kept them from going under some furniture, and they do squeak also. He will play with his 10 inch ball (not a Kong) that I got at the toy store, batting it to me with his feet, all the while with another toy in his mouth! He would make a good soccer player, as he's pretty good at making sure the big ball gets to me so that I can toss it again.

I've given up on stuffed toys - too much stuffing to pick up around the house.

Caroline,

I think Sam is a particularly lucky dog, to have you (and the tennis balls too:)

Our current Westie's favorite 'toy' was a hunk of towel that I knotted up. He wanted you to throw it so he could 'capture' it, then growl and shake it to 'kill' it. It was also good for tug-o-war. (Now he's 14 and past all that.)

I purchased a bag of toy mice for my cat, red, green & blue. He only plays with the green one.

He likes his pink puffy balls. He seems to like the light weight and little size. Bigger balls I've gotton him are too hard to throw....he throws his own balls.....

My old cat's favorite toys were the pastry tips from the cake-decorating set.

So, to keep them safe, I gave her the caps from the saline bottle, etc. Anything slightly conical (so it rolled unpredictably and in a slight circle--i.e., not away from her) and heavy/light enough to bat easily (so it would fly well), and hard enough to rattle against the hardwood floor.
She would bat them under the piano and fish them out again. Or bat them across the floor.
We found a whole bunch of them under the china cabinet just recently when we had to move it; the current cat was -not- interested in them.

The cat before her would play with his Cat Dancer--he'd take it into the front hall and hold it in his mouth and chase the other end (almost like chasing his tail); he liked the narrow front hall because the wire would rattle against the baseboards.

All of my cats liked the Cat Dancer. But he was really the only one to play with it by himself.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cat Dancer

I know what my other cat really liked, those rings around milk jug tops. Red or blue, he loved them all and would carry them over to the couch to burry them in the pillows. That ended when he went blind, so I would think it was color that played into that. Otherwise, I might think the smell of the milk would make a difference. He certain still knew his way around and spent a lot of time on the couch, but no more rings.

Some of the color preference may be the difference in the dyes.

Have you ever noticed that 'identical' items, say tee shirts, feel different according to the color?

'Steelhead,' the fish, was a gift in a new pup welcome basket given to us by a dear friend when we adopted Jack three years ago. Jack carries Steelhead around, throws him in the air, plays fetch with him and loves to make him squeak by gently pushing on his belly with his nose. Especially in the first year or so, Jack destroyed at least 10 dog beds, dozens of stuffed animals, toys, a windowsill, a stair tread, a boot, a seatbelt, and, unfortunately, a few squirrels. But Steelhead survives and even still squeaks! He does need a bath though.

Caesar the peke won't chew on Nylabone types or rubber type toys...soft toys he tears apart in a few minutes...all of his toys are the rope types in shapes and knots...of different colors, I guess the colorful part is for my amusement.

I keep about 2 dozen stuffed toys for the granddog to play with when she visits. A small hedgehog with longish plush fur was the first one she always dug out of the basket for play sessions. It was obviously her favorite. The feel of the fabric on the toy is what I believe made it a favorite.

Lily, the dog from next door also showed much favoritism to that same toy. When she came to visit, first thing she would do is get that hedgehog out of the basket and carry it around the house. The toy always had to be taken from her when she went home. One day as her owner was leaving, before anyone could grab her, the little sneak flew out the door with the hedgehog clenched in her mouth and ran home
with it.

Presently, the hedgehog stays at Lily's house. We all keep looking for another hedgehog, but are finding nothing even close to the same kind of fabric in a hedgehog or any other dog toy.

This post was edited by gazania on Wed, Jul 30, 14 at 14:12

My little dog has a ton of toys but she particularly likes a small round hedgehog toy with a very cute sounding squeeker. I buy them at bed bath and beyond. She now has several of them because I worry what will happen if I can not find them, so I just bought several. They are her menions! She has jobs for all of them. There is one in the window in the front of the house guarding the front, there is one at the slider door in the sunroom watching the back. The others have various stations around the house including at her food bowls.

She plays with them for hours, she rolls them, throws them, bats them around like a soccer player and she usually has one in her bed or in our bed.
She is hilarious to watch with her menions.
I have bought the same toy for my neighbors black lab who loves it, and for one of my best friends little min pin who won't let anyone else touch it she loves the thing so much.
I don't know what it is about this particular toy but every dog just loves them.
I have seen other hedgehogs and in fact bought her another type and she leaves it in the toy box untouched.
This is exactly the one she loves, she has several of the small ones which she loves, we found the big momma one and bought it but she won't play with it at all.
Talking Hedgehog Plush Dog toy

I was at the Flea Market a couple of weeks ago and heard a squeaking noise. There was a young girl selling puppies. I wasn't looking for a puppy but what they were playing with. It was an empty water bottle.It was squeezed and they would roll it and push on it.She said that they love it. I tried it for my dog,but she has only been with us for about a month and she is 2 1/2 and doesn't seem to play with any toys. She would rather sit on our lap.

I was just at lunch with my neighbor and she was telling me about her lab and the toy. The one I bought didn't have a working squeaker, and she didn't know it was supposed to make sounds. The dog was playing with it and threw it against the wall hard and lo and behold the thing made the sound! She said they all froze and looked at the hedgehog in amazement. Then the dog was on a mission to get it to happen again. She has done it about 4 times now. She has no idea what exactly has to happen to make it sound.

The ones that I bought my dog all made sounds originally but now most of them she has managed to kill the sound maker.
It makes the cutest warbly animal sound, not the regular squeaker at all.

Love that picture of Sam with his first tennis ball! I don't often buy toys for my pets because I get a lot of donated food and almost always toys are donated too. The ones I have bought are a little bird and a mouse that chirp when they are touched very slightly. I bought them for the cats, but my dog, Gertie, likes them the most. Baby Coon likes them too, and her favorite toy is a large stuffed rat that I call the "rat doll". You can ask her where it is, and she will go get it. She is a lot better at finding her stuff than I am at finding mine....my phone has been missing for two days.

Ya know the motorized ball that rolls around and has a tail on it?
My mom had one for her cat and the motor broke. She gave it to me and I took the motor out since it was too heavy to bat around.
Well, one of my cats loves that thing. She knocked it down the steps so many times the ball broke. It wouldn't stay closed, so now is half a ball with a tail!
That thing goes upstairs at night and downstairs in the daytime. Sometime I hear her crying looking for it. More than once I've gotten out of bed to help find.
That ball has been around for at least 6-7 years.

My big guy likes the plastic tabs you pull off milk or OJ cartons. I have no idea how he knows its a new container, but almost without fail he comes running when I start to pull it off.
When he carries it around in his mouth it looks like he is suckling on a pacifier. He carries to a place to bat around in private and then hides them.

I haven't purchased toys in years....they like trash!

My one dog's favorite toy was a little soccer ball that squeaked really, really loud and he loved to carry it around the house, squeaking away. Well, his cousin dog was over for a visit and took that soccer ball and ripped a big hole in it!! So I went to the pet store to find another and they didn't have the exact same toy. I started squeaking everything they had, to the annoyance of just about everybody there. I found the loudest one they had and when I took it up to the register, the guy asked did I really want that one? That it was really loud and annoying. I told him it was exactly what I was looking for and Fred was a happy pup when I brought it home for him!!

But Carmelita likes stuffed animals. If I throw them, she will go and get it, shake it and bring it back to me to throw again. She will do this until I can't take it anymore or until Fred grabs it and runs with it. He does not bring them back to me. Only close enough to tease me and then run away!

I am very lucky in that neither one tears up their toys.

My cat also loves the rings from milk bottles and he has a Da Bird, which is feathers on a string on a pole. He goes nuts with that, so it has to live in a closed closet. He's going on 13 now and not quite so into toys anymore.

You reminded me salgal, my hunter kitty has this blue bunny he loves. More than life itself! One of those I have to put in the wash occasionally, so it won't be so disgusting. But he only plays at night. Or when I'm gone? Never during a weekend day. Weird. He will bring it to my bedroom door (closed!) at night and cry for me to ?see? that he's brought it to me. Doofus. I always thought it's just the right size for him to carry and soft was why he played with it. Maybe it's the blue, but I don't think so.