Puppy Essentials - The Toys You Actually NEED!

0:00 toys aren't just fun they're essential for your puppy's development mental stimulation and overall happiness and bond with you so whether you're preparing for your first puppy or refreshing your Essentials list I've got you covered today we're talking about must have puppy toys from Toys that you

0:18 can play together with to food dispensing toys and everything in between I'm going to be showing you the best options for you and your puppy now I've had my new puppy John Denver home for just about a month now so I thought it would be the perfect time to go over what you need and also what you don't so

0:34 that you can spend your money on the things that are truly going to benefit you and your puppy these toys can help grow your relationship teach your puppy valuable skills entertain your puppy when you just need a little bit of a break and make that sometimes chaotic puppy time a bit easier hi I'm Laura

0:50 from doggyu and I'm a certified guide dog mobility instructor service dog trainer and trick trainer who's been training and placing service dogs throughout the US and Canada for the last 15 years and today we're going to have some fun and talk about toys why toys are essential for puppies chewing

1:06 needs chewing is a very normal puppy behavior especially when teething so we need to give them an appropriate outlet Toys save your furniture your shoes and your hands mental stimulation toys can keep your puppy's mind sharp and prevent boredom related behaviors which can be really challenging to fix once they

1:25 start bonding and socialization interactive toys strengthen your bond with your pupp puppy they can also be a great way to start teaching obedience skills and impulse control through play exercise toys encourage physical activity which is essential for a growing pup as they learn how to use

1:42 their body types of essential puppy toys so I'm going to break this down into two categories we're going to do food toys and non-f food toys and each have their place and their role and we're going to talk about what you should use and how you should use them let's start with stuffable toys this is going to be your

1:57 topples your pupsicles and your Kongs the purpose of stuffable toys is to provide long lasting mental stimulation that can generally be left with the puppy they can help train positive experiences of separation and independence from you and gives you a break during that very demanding puppy

2:13 stage so if you're going to use a stuffable toy what should you fill it with I personally use's Pride raw that's my dog's food so I go ahead and stuff it in here and freeze it and it gives them lots and lots of entertainment and John Denver loves his raw food so if you want to check that out I actually have a 30%

2:31 off discount code that you can use doggy you and at checkout and get 30% off your first order but if you don't feed raw and you feed kibble there's lots of options for you as well you can either soak that kibble in like a chicken broth like a low sodium or no sodium chicken broth and then stuff it in here I will

2:48 use some of the honest kitchen dehydrated food you can mix that with your kibble again uh you know soak it and put it in here and then you can freeze it if you want a bigger challenge for your dog or you can use like a semi liquid substrate so you can take their kibble a little bit of pumpkin or a

3:02 little bit of yogurt and mix that with their kibble and put it in here as well so lots of different options for stuffing these with your dog's normal food a couple tips for using stuffable toys these are generally safe to be left with your dog but you want to observe them multiple times before leaving them

3:17 in their crate with them while you're gone you also want to start with the easiest one first especially for puppies so I started John Denver with this little one and I didn't actually freeze it so I just stuffed it with the raw uh and gave it right to him so that he started to learn how fun it is to work

3:34 through these little puzzles and then as he got better at them I can put the raw in and freeze it back up for him and then give it to him in his crate so he starts learning that the crate is an awesome place to be so the topples are generally the easiest because they're kind of shaped like a little bowl for

3:48 your dog after your dog is doing well with topples you can graduate to things like a Kong or a wolf Popsicle or a my wolf popsicle I really like Kongs because they take a lot longer for dogs so if you have a dog that is really engaged in it again start with it not frozen and give it to them so that they

4:05 understand that they can get all the way to the bottom I'll sometimes put something even better way down at the bottom here so they can smell it through the little hole uh and then you can freeze it for them long lasting and then I also like these woof pupsicles uh cuz if you're low on freezer space like

4:20 sometimes I run out of freezer space CU there's so much raw in there um these are great because they come you can buy these like pre-made Pops that can go in so if you are going on a trip and you want something that you you can give your dog but you don't have a freezer to bring you know stuff in then you can get

4:34 pre-made stuff or if you do have a freezer they actually make molds for these so you can fill the molds and instead of having to freeze the whole Toy you can just Fe like freeze the little insert which is perfect if you are low on freezer space so I really like these as well all of these oh that

4:50 makes a noise so all of these are pretty easy to clean I'm fortunate in that my dogs basically clean them out for me and once they do that I just throw them in the top shelf of my dishwasher and that's easy peasy uh this is how you would be able to load this one so super simple uh

5:06 so I love stuffable toys they really are good at teaching your dog Independence as well as relaxation especially in the crate now let's talk about interactive puzzle toys that are going to use your dog's kibble or treats the purpose of these interactive toys is to provide mental stimulation and teach problem

5:22 solving they also teach self-directed independent play and work their nose I like to use their meals for training but this gives a great option to help them drain some mental and physical energy and is no more difficult for you than just dropping food in a bowl but with better outcomes for your puppy so there

5:38 are a lot of interactive toys out there and today I'm going to show you the ones that I have been using for like literally a decade because they hold up well and my dogs love them so lots of different options I'm going to show you my favorites that are tried and true that I have raised tons of puppies on so

5:55 the first one is the Kong wobbler this just unscrews there's actually I use this this morning there's there's some kibble in it so this unscrews you just dump their food in and then they can rock it back and forth this one unfortunately got given to adult Malinois and he you know destroyed the

6:11 top of it but that was a pretty hard bitey dog this isn't typical and I haven't had that issue with any other dog a note on using any of these toys is that you should take them up in a way when they're done eating out of them so Kong wobbler Falls over food comes out love it this is the Kong genus again

6:28 this one is a decade old and I still use it like every other day so this one you stuff food in like through the top of it and the dog has to like pick it up and bop it around for the food to come out which is really fun for them it's also soft so it's great for hardwood floors this one is a fun one so this is a gyro

6:46 I Believe by Kong and this ball spins and then the food comes out it is kind of loud so it's probably better for like low pile carpet um but the way that it rolls the dogs really love it you just unscrew it again dump food in super easy now I also love these snoops for hardwood floors specifically because

7:04 they're not super loud the way some of these like harder plastic toys are and for me I use these almost every morning with John Denver so I need to get up and get him out of you know out to go to the bathroom but I'm not finish getting ready in the morning and no one else in the house is up so I need him to kind of

7:19 be like quiet but have something to do while I get ready and these are great for that so I literally go into the bathroom with him which is puppy proofed and he can bounce these all around the bathroom while I get ready there's like a larger version and a smaller version so I use this for little baby puppies

7:34 and this when they get older my older dogs love these too and then again they're pretty easy to wash then I also have these IQ balls these are some of my favorites tried and true I have them in two sizes this also has kibble from this morning in it this one is great for little puppies and Denver loves carrying

7:49 this around he can also push it really far so I have like my little puppy proofed area and he can just run all over the place chasing this so lots of physical and mental exercise here and then we have the bigger one if you don't want your dog being able to pick it up as much um this one works really great

8:04 for puppies what's cool about these is the difficulty level so one of the tips that I have is you can make these more challenging as your dog gets better at solving the problem with these you just unscrew them and dump it in but they also have this little insert here and you can make this more challenging by

8:23 closing or opening the hole more depending on your dog's kibble size you can also put some of the kibble underneath it or take this out all together if you want it to be nice and easy for your dog cuz you want them to be successful and that's the really important thing about using any of these

8:38 toys is we want to start them off really easy so if a dog might be nervous about the sound these might make cuz one of the benefits of these is like you teach them that they're the ones that are going to make the loud noise so they get less nervous of noises anyway um so if I have a dog that's a little nervous to

8:53 eat out of these I can just start with just feeding them out of the top so literally putting this on the ground putting their kibble in it and having them eat out of it you can also put a little peanut butter on it so they lick it and it tips over and food comes out again these toys are all about a decade

9:07 or so old and they still work fantastic so I got my bang for my buck there another honorable mention is the snuffle mat so if you need something that's totally silent but takes a little while for your dog again you dump the kibble in and you kind of like snuffle it into all these little fingers of fabric here

9:26 and you just dump it in and they'll sniff it all around I also use this when I'm training in between sets so if I need to give them a mental break I'll put this on the ground throw a little cookie scatter in here and it gives me time to reset myself and kind of figure out what I'm going to be training next

9:42 so it works really well for that too one other interactive toy that I want to mention that isn't exactly a Kibble toy but is still really useful is a type of lick mat so this lick mat has suction cups on the back which is perfect for bathtime or cooperative care type activities and you're going to take some

9:58 type of like liquid thing so you can smear your Raw on here a little bit of yogurt a little bit of peanut butter pumpkin whatever and it's going to encourage your dog to lick it off licking is a coming activity great for the crate great for bath time so this is just another good one that's like a

10:13 honorable mention since it's not actually a Kibble toy one final Pro tip here is to utilize your puppy exercise pen for these toys so if you're worried about a toy rolling under your couch and you not being able to get it back out from there or your dog trying to like dig under the couch to get to it put

10:27 your puppy and the toy in an ex exercise pen and then you don't have to worry about that so that works out really well and hey if you're getting value out of this video I would love it if you headed on down and booped that like button doing so lets me know that you want more videos like this one and it's a little

10:43 bit of positive reinforcement for me and if you're interested in any of the toys that I talk about today I've actually curated a list of all of these down in the description below so click on the little more button that'll show you everything and then you can pick out the ones that'll be best for you and your

10:57 dog now let's move on to non-f food toys and we'll start with chew toys the purpose of durable chew toys is to satisfy that need to chew as well as soothe that teething pain that your puppy is going to get now I have ones that I love that are perishable items so items that are consumables that your dog

11:14 is going to consume but today we're only going to talk about the ones that your dog is not going to actually consume I'll do another video on consumables cuz I think that's really valuable too and can really be a lifesaver when you just like need your puppy to have an activity to do cuz you got stuff to do on your

11:28 own so I'll do another video for that today we'll talk about nonedible chews so these are the typical ones when you think about dog chews that come to mind so you've got like your nyab bone style chws your benab bone style chews again make sure that you're observing your dog before leaving them with any of these

11:46 type of toy um I also really like these this bamboo chew my dogs seem to really enjoy them they have these little Nubs so I think they're really good at cleaning their teeth and sometimes I'll actually put a little bit of dog toothpaste in the slots here to encourage the chewing with the dog

12:02 enzimatic toothpaste on there I also have this Kong like pseudo wood type chew that the dogs also really like I don't do a ton of puppy specific non-consumable chews but a couple ones that John Denver is really liking is these ring ones um cuz they I think cuz they make a fun noise he likes that and

12:21 then this one which can be Frozen and he really likes how that feels on his gums um I will make sure that I put these links down in the description so that you can find everything that I talk about here um and easily click on it and get it for your dog so these are a couple of the different types of chews

12:36 the other thing I don't have down here is a split Antler chew because that's sort of a consumable sort of not again with everything you want to do what your vet recommends there is always a risk when you're talking about chewing on hard things of potential damage to the dog's teeth or swallowing a thing all of

12:51 that so you kind of have to figure out where your wrist tolerance level is and the type of chewer your dog is but split antlers so split in half can be really for some dogs as well a couple tips for using these types of chews is you want to throw them out if they get small like if they get too small or get broken

13:08 you're going to toss them so that your dog isn't accidentally consuming them and then you can also make them slightly more interesting for your dog by dipping them in chicken broth and then letting them dry and that'll kind of reignite your dog's interest in some of these more static chews some dogs love them

13:24 sub dogs don't but they're great to have around so your dog can passively chew when they don't have like an active chewing activity to do next let's talk about fetch toys fetch toys are great for exercise and training basic cues like Fetch and drop retrieve can also be a great bonding activity and a great way

13:40 to expend some energy in your yard if you're not able to get out on a hike that day but remember that with young puppies we don't want to do too many repetitive things on their growing joints so keep sessions super super short and even set them up so they're facing the toy before they run out for

13:55 it so they're not spinning hard to get it now I'm really big into frisbee so one of my favorite fetch toys is discs and we need to have puppy specific discs or that at least puppy friendly discs we don't want to just get whatever is available at the pet store that free frisbee that you got as swag those can

14:11 break in your dog's mouth and cause serious damage so the two types of discs that I like to use are these pup specific soft FL discs they're super floppy really easy on puppy's teeth and then I also like these rough wear uh these are the medium I believe size discs and these are really great they're

14:29 soft they fly well and it's easy for your puppy to pick them up because they've got this nice little Ridge here for them so these frisbees work really really great for teaching really beginner flat disc skills you can also use balls for fetch or like holy rollers we want to avoid using tennis balls

14:47 because we don't want to teach them the habit of chewing on tennis balls even though they're going to lose these teeth and get new ones we don't want to create that habit because chewing on tennis balls can actually dle their teeth over time so like Chuck it balls is a better option make sure you clean them often so

15:00 that there's not dirt in the little grooves my biggest tip for toys when you're playing Fetch with your dog is always make sure that your fetch specific toys are put away when you're done playing with your dog and then you bring them out when you're going to play again which keeps them really fun and

15:14 exciting and it's an activity you're going to do together and it's great for also making sure that you're getting that nice retrieve to hand because you have got specific toys and a specific pattern that you're going to do with them next is Tug toys and the purpose of tug toys is to promote bonding and

15:29 healthy play behaviors it also meets their natural need to tug and want to play with you a lot of puppies really really want to tug put things in their mouth and playing tug with them is a great outlet for that so that they're not tugging on your clothing for puppies we want to use rope or soft tug toys

15:47 kind of like this one that's made out of fleece we want really long toys some of the toys that they sell for puppies are super short and we don't want that puppies do not have good control over their mouth SL body at that age and so we want to put as much distance between our hand and the puppy's mouth as

16:04 possible and this would probably be like the shortest tug I would use with a puppy sometimes I'll use tugs that are like three or 4 feet long which is also great for like if you have older children that want to play with your puppy uh so again keeping hands away from puppy mouths when playing with tug

16:19 toys it's really important that we do the same thing as we do with our fetch toys the toy comes out when we're going to play with our dog and gets put away when we're done playing tug we also want to have like teach some some skills around playing so we want to get a nice out and we want to teach a behavior that

16:34 means bite on the tug so I use an out and a strike so that my dog will out it on Q and then regrip it on Q as well when playing with tugs it's also important to be safe with our young puppies we want to provide resistance to them but we don't want to like pull on them really hard or like shake their

16:50 necks back and forth none of that we want slow resistance where they're doing the tugging and we can just like slowly move it back and forth or just provide that resistance for the puppy but we're not shaking our puppy with the tug toy because that is not going to be great for their neck now let's talk about

17:07 plushies plush toys can be really comforting to some puppies like John Denver came with this oversized lamb that was in the pen with all the other puppies and I've had it in his crate ever since and he sleeps with it with his head on it it's kind of a you know nod to being back home which is

17:22 comforting for him plush toys can also be great for independent play especially if they've got squeakers or crinkly stuffff in inside of them or a water bottle stuffed inside those can all be great for independent play for your puppy now the hard thing about plush toys is not all dogs are going to be

17:37 plush toy dogs some dogs can have them only under supervision some dogs will never destroy them ever and some dogs will go directly for the jugular and rip all the stuffing out and potentially consume it so we don't want that to happen so some dogs just plushies aren't safe for them but if you are looking at

17:52 a plushy you want to look at like durable stuffed toys so things with reinforced uh seams like I have this frog from Kong and it um it's got like a almost like a rubberized outside but it's got a squeaker in it as well and my dogs have not been able to destroy it or they haven't tried to destroy it this is

18:10 a great toy for like if you need something a little bit more durable however some dogs will go right in and rip everything out of it so you really have to try a couple things monitor your dog don't leave them with something that they're going to rip up and ingest obviously but some dogs they'll never

18:27 like def fluff their fluffy toy and they can play with them all the time and they work great so it's really dog dependent specifically for the plush type toys now let's talk about common mistakes that we absolutely want to avoid first is leaving a puppy alone with a new toy like I said we want to observe our puppy

18:44 multiple times with every single toy that I talked about today to ensure that they're not going to ingest something and become harmful for them like I said I don't generally leave them with plush toys but I might leave them with something like a Kong or a topple if they're not going to destroy it next is

19:00 under no circumstance should you repurpose a child's toy or a child stuffed animal as a dog toy often times they're filled with things like beads that the dog could rip open and ingest or they might pluck out the eyes and eat those so we don't want to repurpose human toys for dog toys especially

19:18 plushies we don't want to give dogs toys that are too small so we talked about how we want long tugs but even other toys I see a lot of puppy toys that are just like really small versions of larger toys and they could potentially choke on them so we want to make sure that we have the correct size for the

19:36 size of puppy that we have the next mistake is ignoring signs of wear and tear we want to be constantly checking our dogs toys and if they get damaged or broken we want to get rid of them so that they don't become a choking hazard for our dog and finally don't overload your puppy with too many toys it's fine

19:52 to have a lot of toys but we want to rotate them out to keep them fresh and interesting for our puppy I also find a lot of more energetic puppies if you put out 10 toys they're going to like hop between all of the toys all day long it's a lot better for them to be able to focus on one two or three Toys than to

20:10 constantly be moving between things all the time so pick a few toys put them out put the rest away and then rotate them out every few days for your puppy now like I said these are my tried andr toys that work really well for my dogs and they seem to last a really long time which is the best bang for my buck cuz I

20:26 want to be able to if I'm going to invest in a toy I want to be able to use it for a long time but not all toys are going to work for all dogs so you want to try and figure out what's going to work for your dog what genre of toy they like best and sometimes you can pick them up like on Facebook Marketplace or

20:41 even like a buy nothing group who is giving away some toys their dogs no longer use so that's a great way to try out different things with your dog now I've shared with you all of my favorite toys but I would love for you to let me know what your dog's favorite toy is cuz I've been using these toys for a long

20:55 time it's probably time for a little bit of a an update for John Denver so I want to see what do you love like is it an interactive toy that your dog can't get enough of is it a plushy that really lasts I would love for you to put that down in the comments so that myself and anybody who's reading the comments can

21:11 find things that are going to work for their dog Ariel if you like this video make sure you subscribe to the channel hit the little bell so you get notified anytime a new video comes out you all have an awesome day and happy training