September 2, 2026 · Uncategorized
The case against the toy box
Most dogs rotate between three toys. The other fourteen are storage you are paying for twice — once at purchase, once in the space they occupy.
We watched twelve households for a month. The median dog had seventeen toys and played with 3.4 of them in any given week. The rest lived in a basket that had itself become furniture.
Rotation beats accumulation
Keep four out. Put the rest away. Swap one a fortnight. Novelty is the thing dogs respond to, and novelty is free if you stop buying and start rotating.
What survives
Objects with a job: something to chew, something to chase, something to shred, something to carry. Four categories, four objects. Everything else is a duplicate wearing a different colour.