Pet Care: Puppy Pal

This brainchild started with this.

You might see this as just another ordinary water bottle. But as I was swigging back a few bottles of nice, cold water, I had a brilliant idea. Why not make a Bottle Buddy toy for my favorite poochies? Otherwise, this bottle is just going to end up in my recycling bin.

I'm sure you've seen Bottle Buddy toys at your local pet store.

This item retails for $8 at PetSmart, so I know I can save some money. I have no grand delusions that my Bottle Buddy is going to look as professional as this. But I am confident that my pups will love what I make for them just as much as anything I buy for them.

To get this project started, I needed to raid my store of old clothes just waiting to be refashioned. I chose these 2 dresses to use some of the fabric for my Puppy Pal.

I have plans for these dresses, but they are so long, I can use some of the bottom length to make my Puppy Pal. So, I wrapped the bottle with some of the green fabric and pinned along its side.

Then I sent it through the machine for a nice tight fit around the bottle.

After that, I cut off all the excess fabric from the newly fitted bottle cozy.

Then, I folded over the flap at the bottom of the cozy so that I could insert some elastic so it would hug the bottle well. I sewed the flap leaving a small gap between the starting stitch and final stitch so that I could thread in the elastic.

Then, using a safety pin, I threaded the elastic round the interior of the flap.

I sewed the 2 ends of elastic together to secure it inside the flap. After adding a few embellishments to make the bottle cozy look more like a critter, the new Puppy Pal was ready to test on the pups.

I'm not sure what kind of critter this is. I'm thinking of it as an earless pig. Unfortunately, Tokie and Piper weren't sure of it either. Tokie refused to get her picture taken with it. Maybe she was just too embarrassed to be seen with a homemade toy. She is kind of a princess. I managed to get a couple of pictures with Piper, but he refused to get near it. He just kept barking at it and watching it from afar. I guess this toy is "Fail" for my dogs, but it would probably be a welcome addition to a house with dogs that like to play with bottles.