Product Review: The Everlasting Treat Ball

Sometimes, you look at a product, dismiss it, and then look at it again going "Well, maaaayyybe".

I did this with the Everlasting Treat Ball.  At first glance, I really didn't think that it was made out of rubber tough enough to withstand being wedged between Elka's molars and really gnawed upon.  I didn't think the edges would stand up to a very intent Doberman's tender mercies.  I thought the treats themselves might be too brittle, and just crumble, and if I didn't use the treats themselves and just put treats in the center, well, why not use the Kong or Monster Mouth instead?

Well, I was wrong.

The Everlasting Treat Ball (which always reminds me of Willy Wonka's "everlasting gobstoppers") is a blue rubber thing that has a hollow center, and a shaped indentation in each side, that you "snap" treats into.  The rubber itself is slightly textured, gives to the touch, and is surprisingly durable.  The treats are not nutritionally spectacular, but they tend not to have added sugar, anyway.  They also come in a variety of flavors; chicken, BBQ, vanilla mint, and there is a grain free one as well.

There are two ways of loading the treats into the Everlasting Treat Ball; both, in fact, tend to involve pinched fingertips, a lot of effort, and perhaps some swearing.  It's hard to jam those suckers in there, which is good, when you think about it, because that makes it harder for the dog to get them out.  There's the "traditional" load, which is "dome side up":

Then there's "hard mode" (for both the loader and the dog), which is dome side down, flat side up:

And Elka indeed is very fond of her Everlasting Treat Ball, regardless of what flavor the Everlasting treats are, and regardless of whether there are extras in the middle for when she breaks through the barriers.  Occasionally, she'll lick and mouth at the thing enough that one of the discs pops out, and if you're not faint of heart, you can pick the slobbery thing up and pop it back in.  Really, it's one of the few times Elka makes something genuinely slobbery.  Another reason to love the Doberman: a minimum of drool.

Normally, I use the Everlasting Treat Ball if we have friends gathered, and need Elka to be diverted.  She'll work on it for a bit, then bring it to somebody, as if to show them what a great thing she has, and then she'll return to licking, chewing, and dropping it on the floor.  The floor dropping trick has been a great success for getting treats out of the Kong and the Monster Mouth, so it's something Elka will pretty much do if there is a treat and treat delivery system involved.  Who says dogs don't generalize?

After an hour, in the interest of science, I took the Everlasting Treat Ball from the jaws of the beast in order to take some "after" pictures:

As you can see, Elka will split her attention between both treats, but they do stand up to the punishment. When not lodged in the ball, the treats on their own don't stand up for very long at all; I also don't recommend administering them as such, unless your dog is rather smaller than Elka.  They seem perfectly sized to choke on, and doing the Doggie Heimlich Maneuver is not on my list of fun ways to spend an evening.

The ball I have is Large sized, and so the treat refills are sized Large as well.  I've only gotten the Chicken and the Grain-Free so far; the BBQ seemed to have too much clothing and furniture staining potential, and Vanilla Mint just seemed, well, weird.  Elka doesn't have bad breath; I suppose if your dog does, you might select the Vanilla Mint flavor to mitigate that a bit.  The Everlasting Treat Ball also seems to be pretty good with regards to tarter-scraping action, but I don't know if this is one of their claims.   Overall, I'm very happy with it.  I hesitated prior to purchase, both because of the price and because I didn't think it would be durable enough, but it's certainly proven me wrong!