I love our pets, but this year we have spent over $6,000 on our pets this year. We have two birds, two cats, and now a dog. I haven’t calculated the exact amount we have spent on our pets, because anything we buy on Amazon goes into our “general merchandise” category. I do a pretty good job of tracking our expenses now, but I subscribe to the 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle) and I don’t feel the need to tear apart my amazon orders or grocery receipts to make sure everything is properly categorized.
Even though we spend a lot of money on animals, we love them (or I guess maybe it is obvious we do because we spend so much?). The problem with our dog Ansel is that he is a chewer, the only thing he won’t destroy with 15 minutes alone is the Nylabone Dura Chew. Unfortunately, we have figured this out the hard way so most of the toys we have bought him have already been destroyed.
Fleece Box Knot Lanyard Toy -DIY
While looking up training for recall (getting your dog to come back to you) some of the recommendations included alternating rewards not just with food, but with a game of tug.
CreateLaughGrow had a great DIY article on creating exactly what I was looking for. Their site has step-by-step instructions so I won’t repost them here. I didn’t need all the details as I remembered making these types of lanyards out of the plastic strings when I was a kid.
I picked a great time to do this project as Joann’s Fabric Store had fleece at 50% off. The minimum quantity they will cut is 1/8th of a yard which worked out perfectly. I got 1/8th of a yard of two different colors and those 1/8th of a yard strips I cut in half to give me a width of 2.25 inches. The bolt width was 59 inches so I ended up with 4 strips of 59″ x 2.25″ for a total of $1.22.
When I did my first couple of knots I tried to keep the fleece from bunching or twisting, but this made the knots really loose. I realized that if you really tightened down the knots it doesn’t matter if they bunch or twist a bit.
The project took me about an hour to complete which I did while watching Netflix (Amazon Prime Video). Even if I figured my hourly rate into the cost of toy the total would be $35.50. I was paying on watching TV anyway so I’m still going to call it $1.22.
