Create your own Goodwill games

Jamie Pflughoeft, a dog photographer and digital portrait artist in Seattle, likes to indulge her Rhodesian Ridgeback-mix, Fergie, without breaking the bank. Her challenge? One of Fergie’s great joys is the rapid annihilation of stuffed toys. Store-bought “victims” can be pretty spendy; Jamie estimates the cost of these adventures at $1.50 per minute. I can Skype Beijing for less than that. Her solution: Re-purposing (i.e., sending to their doom) stuffed toys from Goodwill. Jamie even suggests transferring old squeakers to squeakerless toys and saving discarded stuffing (no bean-bag filled toys) for other uses such as creating a dog bed. Just be sure you know your dog’s toy-ravaging techniques so that he or she won’t swallow something that will lands you both at the emergency vet. Read Jamie’s complete suggestion.