FOFOS

FOFOS is a Chinese pet toy brand founded in 2017 and sold worldwide. The range is mostly play: rope and rubber for dogs, teasers and catnip for cats, with a handful of novelty beds, cardboard cat houses and sisal scratchers alongside. It is priced to be replaced rather than kept forever, which is the honest way to think about toys.

Dog Toys: Matching The Toy To The Chewer

• Tuff Gear is the tough end - high-density TPR tyres and a driveshaft, rated for dogs from 5 kg to 40 kg and built for strong chewers
• Woodplay is moulded wood fibre with pine scent, designed to wear into granules rather than splinter the way a real stick does. FOFOS rate it for moderate chewers
• Flexy is dura-flex TPR that stretches and springs back. Good for bouncing and gnawing, not for a dog that destroys things
• Plush and Skinnez are carry-and-shake toys. The Skinnez range has no stuffing in the body at all, which removes the usual mess and the usual swallowing risk
• Rope is for tug with you, never for leaving down. Swallowed strands are one of the harder foreign bodies to deal with

Enrichment: Making A Dog Work For Food

• The plush treat toys, the Fruity Bites lattice fruits and the two snuffle mats all do the same job - they turn two minutes of eating into ten minutes of problem-solving
• Ten minutes of sniffing settles most dogs better than another lap of the block, and it slows down a dog that bolts its food
• Feed part of the daily ration this way rather than adding treats on top

Cat Toys: Three Kinds, And You Need All Three

• Wands are for play with you. Move the lure away from the cat, let it vanish behind something, and always let them catch it at the end. Put them away afterwards - cord and string are dangerous if swallowed
• Solo toys - the weighted wobbler and cactus, the lattice roller balls, the motion-triggered birds and the USB-rechargeable Mouse in Cheese - keep a cat going when nobody is home
• Kicker and catnip toys let a cat finish the hunting sequence by grabbing and raking with the back feet. Roughly one cat in three does not respond to catnip at all, and kittens under six months usually do not

Cat Furniture

• Scratching is not a habit to train out. Cats scratch to shed the claw sheath, to stretch the back and shoulders, and to leave scent
• A post has to be taller than the cat's full stretch or it gets used once and abandoned. The Carrot post is 58 cm; the Carrot ramp is 61 cm long and doubles as a perch
• Put a new scratcher where the cat is already scratching, not where it suits the room, then move it slowly
• The cardboard cat houses combine a hideout and a scratch pad in one, and cardboard is a consumable - it is meant to be shredded

Display Boxes

• Several of the small cat toys are listed as counter display boxes of 18 or 24 pieces. These are shop units, priced and supplied as the whole box
• Useful for a multi-cat house or as a gift stash, but check the piece count before you order if you only wanted one toy

Good To Know

• No toy is indestructible. Supervise play and take a toy away once it starts coming apart
• Match the size to the pet. A toy small enough to fit past the back teeth is a choking risk
• FOFOS's own guidance for the Flexy, Woodplay and Skinnez ranges is moderate chewers rather than determined destroyers. We say the same