A bone not to pick?

There is a brand of dog toy called Playology. Their slogan is "Toys That Make Scents to Dogs."

Science! 

The Web site explains it this way: 

Dog noses are 10,000x more powerful than a human’s. But they have 80% fewer taste buds. A dog’s brain craves scent.

Scent processing through a dog’s nasal passage is detected by 220 million scent receptors.

In a dog’s brain the olfactory bulb is three times the size of a human’s.

Dog noses are stereoscopic, with one nostril identifying a smell, and one locating it.

Armed with these facts, these smell boffins of Gardena, California, invented their Encapsiscent Technology: 

Because we embed the scents directly into the material of each toy, your pooch will enjoy chewing and sniffing over and over again.

And as it says on the package, dogs play with scented toys 7X longer than with unscented toys.

I'd seen their products in the PetSmart in the leadup to the holidays, but resisted temptation -- the bone for heavy chewers cost twenty bucks, which is a hell of a lot for a chew toy, science or no science. But in the post-Christmas sales it was up on deep discount, so what the heck -- I bought one.

Our main chewer these days is youthful dog Nipper, Old Man Tralfaz having turned seven and now much too sophisticated for chew toys, except when he's not. Nipper loves a toy he can chew, and especially one he can destroy. Often in the mornings when we can't go for a walk I will sneak a toy out to the yard and get him revved up on it -- a half hour of chasing, stealing, and chew chew chew will usually make him a happy pup.

So I brought the Playology bone outside, showed it to him, and threw it into the yard. Nipper tore after it like a greyhound. He sniffed it, tasted it, and proceeded to roll around on it. This is a good sign, as it is his way of claiming a toy and getting his scent on it. So I was pretty impressed by the scientists. 

That lasted about two minutes. Then he completely ignored the thing. I could not get him reengaged on it.

The next time we were in the yard I picked it up. He leaped at it as if to take it from me, so I threw it. Again he charged after the toy, but as he neared it he veered away and went somewhere else. He has not touched it since. 

I brought the Playology toy inside, thinking its turkey scent might work better there. Maybe Tralfaz would try it. But it has been lying on the same spot on the rug for three days, untouched, unloved.

It is true that my dogs, for whatever reason, always preferred toys they could rip to shreds, something I've discussed in this space in so many posts I can't even link to them all. (Okay, just one.) And tough toys that resist destruction are of lesser interest to them. Still, they usually give it a shot. They just don't care about this Playology bone. Neither dog has any more interest in this bone than they would if I left a wrench on the rug. It's like it's not even there. Even if they didn't like the turkey scent I would expect some reaction from them.

I might have been warned by the one review on the PetSmart site: "My dog did NOT like at all, it smelled like rubber." One star.

Maybe Playology has other customers whose dogs love the toy. Surely they didn't spend all this money to develop a sciencey! dog toy without testing it on dogs, right? Otherwise it would be that old shaggy dog joke about the company that designs the perfect dog food campaign.

All I can say is that there are limits to science, and even more limits to things that are marketed with the look and appeal of science but are just a hunk of malarkey. Or, maybe my dogs are weird.