Homemade Brain Games Toy For Your Dog

Homemade Brain Games Bottle Toy

Video Transcript

It is a beautiful day outside today, so I ventured out to make a toy for Reggie when he had his hernia surgery a couple of months ago, I started thinking about different toys that could keep dogs occupied when they couldn’t exercise for whatever reason.

So, today we’re going to make a great toy for distributing food using this one by four by eight piece of cedar, and we’ll walk you right through it. I’m Shannon, this is Reggie. So materials for today’s project.

You’re going to need one board, and I have gone with a one by four by eight piece of cedar. You can use pine if you want to, it’ll keep things cheaper. I like cedar, and I like things to be pretty, so I’m going with cedar for today’s project because I only need one piece, it’s still keeping the cost for my project under $10.

You’ll need a piece of doweling, and I’ve got a half inch piece of dowel because my dog is a little bit of a ruffian. If you have a very gentle dog, you can probably go with something a little bit thinner. I’ve gone with half an inch. You will need, three of four plastic bottles. And you go with bigger bottles if you’d like. This is what I happened to have available and ready for me. So I’m just going with a 591-milliliter size of bottles.

You’ll need a few of those. You’ll need some wood glue to keep things sturdy, some screws. And I’ve also bought, buttons to cover the holes that my dowel is going to create. So all in all this project is going to cost less than $10.

If you go with pine over cedar, it’s probably going to cost you less than $5. Alright, I’m ready to get started with, chopping down my large piece of wood here, going to make, two 24 inch pieces, so two two foot pieces and I’m going to make two 22 and a half inch pieces so that I’ll have a perfect square when I’m done. There we go.

I’ve got my four pieces of wood for my box, and a little piece left over for that wonderful smell that cedar gives off. Okay, so, when I’m working on projects like this, I like to use pocket holes and sink the screws so that no screws are sticking up, no sharp edges are sticking up anywhere. Especially when I’m working with my dogs.

I don’t want to take a chance that they might snag a paw on something like this. I’ve got this great little Kreg Jig that’s very portable, very very easy to use, and very small to store. For those of you that may have noticed as well, I’m working on a grooming table as my work table. It’s a great dual purpose tool for those of us that like to do multiple things, and maybe don’t like to store a lot of things.

So, I’ve got jig set up here to make my screw holes. And I’ve already done a little bit of a test just to make sure that I’ve got it on the right settings. So I’m going to drill my holes. I’m just gonna do one on each side. I don’t need to overdo it; this is a very small box that I’m making. So now I’ve got my juice mauler board set up with two pocket hole screws, or two pocket holes on each side.

And I’m just about ready to screw it all together.

Okay, so one last thing that I need to do with my two shorter boards before I start actually to screw all this together, is drilling the two holes that I’m going to need for my doweling to sit in.

So I’m going to measure to the 12-inch point on this. Now I know this board isn’t completely 24 inches, and that’s okay, cause I’m using smaller bottles. I just want it to sit up a little bit higher so that it’s easier for my dog to play around with that. So you’re going to measure to the 12-inch mark there.

I’m just going to put a little X, and that’s where I’m gonna drill my hole. I’m using a half inch bit so that my half inch dowel piece will fit in there nicely in a perfect world. Gonna clamp my board to the table, just to secure it. There we go. Make sure I’m well passed the edge here. Alright, I’m just going to test to make sure that fits well with my doweling.

Perfect. Excellent. Ready to put it all together. Alright, now just before I, do attach everything together, it’s an easier time right now for me to sand through things a little bit, so that there are not all these splinters. And I can make it a little bit, a little bit nicer for my dog. And I don’t risk my dogs getting splinters while they’re playing with this.

And I’m just using a coarse, a coarse sandpaper right now, it’s an 80. Doesn’t need to beautiful, so I just want to take those edges off with a coarser grit. Alrighty and before I move on, I just like to make sure that there aren’t any splinters in there, everything’s nice and smooth. There’s nothing that’s going to catch my dog’s foot. Okay, I’m happy with that.

You can certainly go over yours with finer and finer sandpaper if you wanted to. I’m quite happy with what I’ve got here considering it’s just a, a dog toy that’s gonna be thrown around by my dogs anyways. Okay, now all that is left is to assemble my pieces here. So I’ve got my wood glue.

I’m going to make a little bit of a strip on each side of my vase. And that’s just going to add some extra strength over time. Alright. I’ll line up my, boards here and I’m going to pre-sink my screws, just to make my life a little easier.

And I’m ready to put it together. Line it up, make sure I’m happy with where it is. I’d like it to be as square as possible. Alright, now I’ve got my box.

Okay, so now I’m ready to put in my doweling. And I’ve cut my dowels just a tiny bit shorter than the box itself. That way I can slide these buttons. I can slide the buttons in on end. And I can keep that nice and secure, but I have the option of taking it out. If I didn’t want to take it out, I would probably glue it in place to make sure that it was nice and secure in there.

But I want to be able to replace these bottles. Because I have a feeling they’re going to take a bit of a beating with my dogs. Now, I’ve cut holes in those bottles, nice and close to the top. So that when they swing, they come right back into position. And that will help to keep the kibbles that I’m going to put inside those bottles in them. So I’m going to slide my dowel in. Not quite all the way, because I need to put my bottles on. Alright. And that fits as perfectly as I was hoping it would.

I’ll just put my buttons on the ends here.

Okay, so I’m all set here with my toy. I just put some kibble in, just to take it for the first test run. And that is exactly how I was hoping it would work. So it’s not super easy for them to come out, but, with enough of a swing, and enough technique they will do just that. Alright, and we come inside to take our toy for a little bit of a test run. It’s just a bit too muddy out there to put it on the ground.

Reggie is eager to see what this is all about.

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