Maddie’s gone green. Poking through our local Barnes & Noble, we stumbled across an intriguing book by Corbett Marshall and Jim Deskevich called ECO Dog: Healthy Living for your Pet. As a family, we haven’t gone totally organic yet, not even close. But we try to eat organic foods and use organic cleaning products around the house as much as we can. So this book peaked our interest. ECO Dog has tons of great ideas for your dog that you can make yourself and will help reduce your pet’s carbon pawprint. The first one we tried was the Braided T-Shirt Bone...
The Braided T-Shirt Bone is described on p. 100 of ECO Dog. It’s very simple to make. You cut strips of fabric from old t-shirts (or new ones if you want). Gather the strips into three groups of strips, tie them into one big knot at one end, braid the three groups, and tie a big knot at the other end. There you have it, a Braided T-Shirt Bone. We call Maddie’s her T-Bone.
ECO Dog didn’t call this toy particularly durable or tough, but it just seemed like it would hold up. Plus, it’s made out of an old T-Shirt! Who cares if she destroys it in seconds? But maybe, just maybe it would actually last...
And it has!!! Maddie has had an absolute ball with her T-Bone! She’s been playing with it for over a month now. While her T-Bone has gotten a little worn, and she’s ripped a few of the strips of fabric and pulled them out, all in all the toy has survived. And since it’s just a braided up T-Shirt, you can throw it in the washing machine when it gets dirty.
The best part about Maddie’s T-Bone is that we’ve come up with a new game to play with it--we’ve taught her to play catch. The T-Bone is light enough that we don’t feel bad tossing it at her, and it’s long enough that novice catcher Maddie can manage to snag it. This T-Bone was a great idea! You may even be able to make a variation with polar fleece or old sweatshirts. Definitely watch for us to try more ideas from ECO Dog: Healthy Living for your Pet!
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