Chewy Review

This month, I was offered an Outward Hound Spinner Blocks puzzle toy to review.

I brought this toy along when traveling to a flyball tournament this past weekend, and tried it out in the hotel room.

Koira was first up. She has a good bit of experience with puzzle toys, so I didn't think she would have many problems with this one. She experimented a bit, and decided pretty quickly that she was supposed to remove the yellow blocks from the toy. However, she found it pretty hard to do that. Pawing at them doesn't knock them loose, and it took a good number of tries before she was able to get them with her teeth. I think on any harder of a surface, or on any day she hadn't just run flyball all day, she probably would have just flipped the entire toy over to get the blocks out. The video doesn't go all the way to the end (thanks to running out of memory part way through filming) but once she got the blocks out, she quickly figured out how to rotate the top piece to expose the other treats.



Ptera has much less experience with puzzle toys. Between that, and how difficult the yellow blocks are to remove even for a dog as big as Koira, who can get her mouth around them, Ptera didn't even have any idea of how to go about this with the blocks in. But she did well when I put just a couple treats in the open squares, and one in each of the covered round pieces.



Overall, this wasn't my favorite puzzle toy. I felt like the yellow blocks were more frustrating to remove than anything, rather than something that made the dog think, and since most frustrated dogs will either start pawing madly/biting/flipping (and be rewarded when the pieces fall out) or give up, it wasn't my favorite part. And I don't know that a dog Ptera's size would be able to remove the blocks at all without flipping the entire puzzle, since she can't really grab them in her mouth at all. Once the yellow blocks are removed, the toy is pretty easy, since opening one of the hidden compartments opens all of the compartments. All of that said, I am sure that there are some dogs who would absolutely love this puzzle to death. I think it just wasn't the right fit for my girls. It was well made, and even Koira grabbing the blocks repeatedly didn't appear to put any marks on the puzzle.


We were sent this item in exchange for our honest review. We were not compensated in any other way, and all opinions here are entirely our own.