We are all about stimulating the senses of our little beagle mix. Whenever we see an intellitoy (you know, a toy that actually requires her to use her brain) we first look into how durable that particular toy is. When Lucy, or any dog I’ve ever seen, gets frustrated they get destructive. The Kong is good for Lucy to chew but the puppy one makes getting the treat too easy, and the adult one too difficult.
The Toys R Us Foobler is a ball that disperses food on a timer. Reading reviews I was torn, some people claimed that their dog destroyed the toy when they could not get food out, others said that their dog did not have any interest in the toy at all, some even said that the toy constantly jammed up, making it unusable. I put it off for a few weeks, but Lucy is the kind of puppy that needs constant stimulation and working on homework or crafts makes it hard to play fetch.
We took the plunge and spent a whooping $29.99 plus FL state tax on the Foobler.
First impressions : This ball is ugly. I’m the kind of pet owner that buys all pink and red toys, if I can’t find it in pink or red, we usually don’t get it. However, none of the Toys R Us logic puzzles are pink or red. Every single one of them is blue, orange, or green. Grrr.
The plastic seems sturdy, but so does a frisbee and those hardly last a week… I’m dubious at this point.
I got home and busted it open, taking care to read all the instructions. You need batteries for this one! I’m lucky enough to live in a techy house where we always have AA batteries laying around but in my parents’ home I would have been out of luck from the get-go.
I already didn’t like this toy because of the color… I’m really not liking it when I read the first instruction page… You are given two options for how your dog should interact with the ball. One option is for “Aggressive chewers” the other is for “skittish dogs.” Lucy is a chewer, she’s just getting her adult teeth, but she is not aggressive about it. She is the opposite of skittish. Both sets of instructions were for the extreme dog, I would have appreciated an option for mildly sassy puppies.
The ball itself is sturdy and locks together well, I can’t see Lucy ever opening this with her mouth. That’s a plus. We used Lucy’s regular kibble in the Foobler, nothing fancy. And then I put in on the floor to watch the thing go…
First bell, we’ve got nothing. Lucy doesn’t even care that there’s a noise going off… Hmm.
I set the timer for fifteen minutes and waited… and waited… The bell went off again but this time she wasn’t into it. I kicked the ball around, knocking out some treats. Lucy seemed more interested in getting a treat from me than working with the ball to get it herself. The ball did a full rotation, so it went off six times within an hour and a half. Nothing too interesting going on.
After doing some more research on the product, (you know, more than just looking for it on Amazon) I’m actually confused. The toy was started by a kickstarter project (which has recently released a bluetooth version of the toy) and cannot be found with a Toys R Us brand anywhere other than Petsmart… That seems weird to me, but what do I know.
It’s been about a month with the Foobler in the house and not too surprisingly this is not a toy we would purchase again. Lucy is on a regular feeding schedule but she does eat quite a few treats during the day. We even tried doing a whole day with the Foobler, a cup of food going off every hour… Not for her. She gets bored and the food falls out whether or not the timer just went off. I haven’t seen her interact with it by herself in about a week, the other day I noticed it had been kicked under my desk, I brought it out and she nudged it back under the desk. She’s probably trying to tell us something…
Team Santana 