Amazing Value

Barley, a dog, lies regally with her prey before her, a salmon-pink elephant with light blue lining its ears.

On a recent trip to PetSmart to resupply Barley’s dry dogfood of choice, I happened upon these shockingly inexpensive dog toys, selling for $5 apiece, with the promise that for each purchase, PetSmart would donate $1 to its charity offshoot. I’ve not done the research on how responsible PetSmart’s non-profit activities are, but I know a bargain when I see one, and at $5, it’s certainly worth seeing if it’s a toy that can last longer than 5 minutes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Barley was able to breach the shockingly thin material by breaking the pathetically weak stitching within a couple minutes. However! I then removed over half the stuffing and stitched the hole shut with upholstery thread (the scariest of all threads), and the toy has now stood up to Barley’s thrashing for months! Sure, it occasionally forms a new breach that I need to close with a bit more thread, but this toy represents the best value-for-money of any toy I’ve ever bought her!