Make Your Own Dog Toys For Under 50 cents – Shaker

Besides making sock ball and sock puppet for your poochie to play, here is another cool toy idea. This shaker toy will provide a great many hours (or minutes depending on your dogs penchant for destruction) of fun.

Variation #1 – Roll Shaker

1. Take a toilet paper or paper towel roll (I prefer the latter one as it is more hygienic).
2. Cover one end of the towel roll with precut round paper and seal the edge with masking tape.
3. Fill it half full with kibbles.
4. Again, cover the other end with precut round paper and seal it with masking tape.

Most dogs will go crazy for the sound the shaker makes. His curiosity will be piqued by what’s making the sound. Of course, once your dog manages to chew through the roll there may be some disappointment when your dog discovers his fun shaker toy is filled with kibbles instead of yummy treats.

The idea here is to get your dog to engage with his shaker toy in a “cognitive” way. Once he understood how it works (either by tearing the paper on both ends or chewing through the roll), this shaker toy will not amuse him any more if you keep filling up with same old kibbles.

In order to keep your dog interested in his shaker toy, you’ll need to fill in better treats to motivate him. Of course you’ll also need to make another shaker that is much harder to destroy.

Variation #2 – Can Shaker

1. Take any soda can and cut both ends off with a can opener. Be sure to smooth the edges or cover them with masking tape so that your dog won’t get cuts while playing with it.
2. Punch a few holes through the can so the treats (i.e. beef jerky) won’t get too moist or stale before your dog can get to them. Also this allows him to see his treat.
3. Follow Step 2 to 4 in variation #1, but with some variations.
4. Use a few layers of papers to seal both ends. You may want to start off with 2 layers and gradually increase them as you go along.

From my own experiment, I found the Can Shaker is much more fun for my dogs besides being cleaner and durable. Having said, my Golden Retrievers could easily get the treats out in a few minutes sometimes less than 60 seconds. The way they get their treats is very much different from my Maltese.

My small dogs know they don’t have the strength to stomp the can nor do they have powerful jaws to rip open the shaker so they push the shaker to the edge of my coffee table (where its bottom has four “sharp” corners) and nose or paw the bottom against the corner a few times. Eventually the paper torn open and treats fell out.

Although I could increase the number of paper on both ends making it harder for my dogs but I never really went more than 2 pieces of paper. I was more interested to get them to move the shaker from one corner of the house to the living room. At the very least they work some calories out of their system while doing just that.