Old T-Shirts = Cheap Dog Toys

So my baby girl loves to shred. She lives to get the squeaker out of squeaky toys and make it so the squeaker doesn't work any more. She also loves to defluff her toys. Thankfully - unless they're her toys, she doesn't defluff or shred anything else.

Amazingly she's very good at this - she sets her mind to her destruction and usually has her job done within 30 minutes or less. I haven't found a toy that stood a chance against her persistence.

Naturally this gets pretty pricey when toys are automatically destroyed. It brings her lots of joy though so I like to get her toys. When it comes to the fluffy ones - I have started going to garage sales and picking up some of the cleaner stuffed animals for a quarter or two. I wash them at home and then her eyes light up and she bounces around in anticipation of getting the new toy.

We had a few extra squeakers from a toy that had replaceable ones (not that it lasted long enough to replace them). And I grabbed a few old shirts that we were going to throw away, and set to trying to make a squeaky toy. I ended up making two toys - one with two squeakers and one without. Naturally she chose the squeaky one first thing and set to her work.

While it took a bit of time braiding the fabric - it was also a lot of fun. Each time I pulled a knot or was working on braiding in the squeaker and accidentally squeaked them her ears would perk up and by the end of it she was waiting by my feet for me to give it to her.

I took two old shirts and some old fabric - you could easily use three shirts, I just wanted another color so I went and dug to find some old fabric.

For the knotted one, I cut three long strips of each fabric - and then made three braids with them. You could make each braid solid or mix in one of each color. I chose to mix the colors in each braid.

Then I braided those three braids together to make for a larger, thicker braid. I made a knot at one end, pulling as tight as I could by holding it with my feet and pulling up. Put a knot in the center and then one more at the bottom.

For the squeaky one, I essentially did the same thing - but on two of the smaller braids, I braided in a squeaker. First I wrapped it in the fabric and knotted around it - then I braided it in. Because of the squeakers I only knotted the two ends since braiding around them made bulges on their own which complicated knotting in the center.

She was quite happy and amazingly it took her quite awhile to get to the squeakers - but now that she has, her mission is complete and she is laying down reaching out chewing on the knotted one with the pile of the destroyed one by her feet. She seems quite content so I'd say I've done pretty good :)