This question is asked a lot because new husky owners have bought certain toys only to find out it wasn’t a suitable toy. There is a huge market for dog toys. The American Pet Products Association or (APPA) estimates Americans will spend around 55 billion dollars on their pets this year. Last year it was a little over 52 billion. We really love our pets don’t we? Just because a manufacture makes a dog toy doesn’t mean it’s a good toy for your dog. A lot of times it really depends on the individual dog. I have one dog that can play with a tennis ball just fine while some of my other huskies can only play with a tennis ball while being supervised. Why? Because they will play with it and then lay down and tear it apart and eat it. Our big male likes to eat any type of toy once he gets done playing with it. If he can swallow it he eats it. I have never understood why he feels the need to eat a toy because it can’t taste good and he is certainly not hungry.
You will have to watch your dog and offer it different types of toys to determine what type of toy you should get your husky. I have found the stuffed animals are great for newborn pups up to about the age of 9 to 12 weeks. After that they start pulling them apart and eating the stuffing. I have hard plastic toys for our dogs to play with as they can’t tear them up as easily. Still a couple of our dogs will set down and chew on them until they get a chunk off and try to eat it. The best thing to do is give them the toys to play with while your watching them and take them up after play time is over. If they swallow a chunk off the toy, it could block their intestines and you could have a huge vet bill to pay for or a dead dog. A 5 dollar toy just isn’t worth the risk.
For the most part, I really like giving our dogs a toy they can chew and eat. A good rawhide bone is fun for them to drag around and chew. A Siberian husky needs something to keep them busy and a chew bone is the perfect choice. Once I hand out the rawhide bones they stay out of trouble and stay busy. That can be a challenging thing but even huskies can be out smarted once in a while.
