- Hey YouTube.
It is an absolutely beautiful day outside today,
so I ventured out to make a toy for Reggie,
when he had his hernia surgery a couple of months ago,
I started thinking about different toys
that could keep dogs occupied when
they couldn't exercise for whatever reason.
So, today we're gonna make a great toy
for distributing food using this one by four
by eight piece of cedar,
and we'll walk you right through it.
I'm Shannon, this is Reggie, and welcome to McCann Dogs.
So materials for today's project.
You're going to need one board,
and I have gone with a one by four by eight piece of cedar.
You can use pine if you want to,
it'll definitely keep things cheaper.
I really like cedar, and I like things
to be pretty, so I'm going with cedar
for today's project because I only need one piece,
it's still keeping the cost for my project under $10.
You'll need a piece of doweling,
and I've got with a half inch piece of dowel,
because my dog is a little bit of a ruffian.
If you have a very gentle dog, you can probably go
with something a little bit thinner.
I've gone with half inch.
You will need, three of four plastic bottles.
And you go with bigger bottles if you'd like.
This is what I happened to have available and ready for me.
So I'm just going with a 591 milliliter size of bottles.
You'll need a few of those.
You'll need some wood glue to keep things sturdy,
some screws.
And I've also bought, buttons to cover the holes
that my dowel is going to create.
So all in all this project is gonna cost less than $10.
If you go with pine over cedar, it's probably gonna
cost you less than $5.
Alright, I'm ready to get started with,
chopping down my large piece of wood here,
and for this project, I'm going to make,
two 24 inch pieces, so two two foot pieces,
and I'm gonna make two 22 and a half inch pieces,
so that I'll have a perfect square when I'm done.
(upbeat music)
There we go.
I've got my four pieces of wood for my box,
and a little piece left over for that wonderful smell
that cedar gives off.
Okay, so, when I'm actually working on projects like this,
I like to use pocket holes and actually sink the screws
so that there's no screws sticking up,
there's no sharp edges sticking up anywhere.
Especially when I'm working with my dogs.
I don't want to take a chance that they might
snag a paw on something like this.
I've got this really great little Kreg Jig
that's very portable, very very easy to use,
and very small to store.
For those of you that may have noticed as well,
I'm actually working on a grooming table
as my work table.
It's a great dual purpose tool for those of us
that like to do multiple things,
and maybe don't like to store a lot of things.
So, I've got my, I've got my, my, jig set up here
to make my screw holes.
And I've already done a little bit of a test
just to make sure that I've got it on the right settings.
So I'm gonna drill my holes.
I'm just gonna do one on each side.
I don't really need to overdo it,
this is a very small box that I'm making.
(upbeat music)
Alrighty.
So now I've got my juice mauler board set up
with two pocket hole screws,
or two pocket holes in each side.
And I'm just about ready to screw it all together.
Okay, so one last thing that I need to do
with my two shorter boards before I start
to actually screw all this together,
is drill the two holes that I'm going to need
for my doweling to sit in.
So I'm gonna measure to the 12 inch point on this.
Now I know this board isn't completely 24 inches,
and that's okay, cause I'm using smaller bottles.
I just want it to sit up a little bit higher,
so that it's easier for my dog to play around with that.
So you're gonna measure to the 12 inch mark there.
I'm just gonna put a little X,
and that's where I'm gonna drill my hole.
I'm using a half inch bit,
so that my half inch dowel piece will fit in there nicely
in a perfect world.
Gonna clamp my board to the table,
just to secure it.
There we go.
Make sure I'm well passed the edge here.
(upbeat music)
Alright, I'm just gonna test to make sure
that fits well with my doweling.
Perfect.
Excellent.
Ready to put it all together.
Alright, now just before I,
do attach everything together,
it's an easier time right now for me to sand through
things a little bit,
so that there's not all these splinters.
And I can make it a little bit,
little bit nicer for my dog.
And I don't risk my dogs getting splinters
while they're playing with this.
And I'm just using a coarse, a coarse sandpaper right now,
it's actually an 80.
Really doesn't need to beautiful,
so I just want to take those edges off with a coarser grit.
(upbeat music)
Alrighty and before I move on,
I just like to make sure that there aren't any splinters
in there, everything's nice and smooth.
There's nothing that's gonna catch my dogs foot.
(upbeat music)
Okay, I'm happy with that.
You can certainly go over yours with finer and finer
sandpaper if you wanted to.
I'm quite happy with what I've got here
considering it's just a, a dog toy that's gonna
be thrown around by my dogs anyways.
Okay, now all that is left is to assemble my pieces here.
So I've got my wood glue.
I'm going to make a little bit of a strip
on each side of my vase.
And that's just gonna add some extra strength over time.
Alright.
I'll line up my, boards here and I'm gonna pre-sink
my screws, just to make my life a little easier.
Okay.
And I'm ready to put it together.
Line it up, make sure I'm happy with where it is.
I'd like it to be as square as possible.
(upbeat music)
Alright, now I've got my box.
Okay, so now I'm ready to put in my doweling.
And I've cut my dowels just a tiny bit shorter
than the box itself.
That way I can slide these buttons, whoops.
I can slide the buttons in on the end.
And I can keep that nice and secure but I have
the option of taking it out.
If I didn't want to take it out, I would probably glue
it in place to make sure
that it was nice and secure in there.
But I want to be able to replace these bottles.
Because I have a feeling they're gonna take
a bit of a beating with my dogs.
Now, I've cut holes in those bottles,
nice and close to the top.
So that when they swing, they come right back
in to position.
And that will help to keep the kibbles
that I'm gonna put inside those bottles in them.
So I'm gonna slide my dowel in.
Not quite all the way, because I need to put
my bottles on.
Alright.
And that fits as perfectly as I was hoping it would.
I'll just put my buttons on the ends here.
Okay, so I'm all set here with my toy.
I just put some kibble in,
just to take it for the first test run.
And that is exactly how I was hoping it would work.
So it's not super easy for them to come out,
but, with enough of a swing,
and enough technique,
they will do just that.
Alright, and we come inside to take our toy
for a little bit of a test run.
It's just a bit too muddy out there to put it on the ground.
Reggie is eager to see what this is all about.
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Thanks for watching.
Happy training.