Bully Sticks - So Much Waste (Or Not)

     Mardi loves bully sticks.  The begging starts as soon as we settle down to watch our night time television shows.  Chewing is a great way to keep her amused and to keep her teeth clean, but there is a lot of waste with bully sticks.
     Most retailers advise that dogs be supervised when chewing.  When the stick gets down to the last couple of inches, it should be taken away and disgarded.  This prevents choking (worst case scenario) or vomiting (messy, but not so serious) if the dog gobbles the last of the chew. Thrifty Beverly hates to toss out these stubs.  I buy fifty jumbo sticks at a time for my rapacious chewer.  It works out to about $4.00 per twelve inch stick.  That means I waste thirty three cents every time I throw the end piece away.  Yeah, yeah thirty three cents doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up to $16.50 on that 50 count bag.
     The internet lead me to one solution -  attaching vise-grip pliers to the end of the stick.  The owner holds the pliers and the dog chews until he bites metal.  This didn't work with our pup. Maybe she was afraid of the pliers or maybe vise-grips smell bad.  Whatever the reason, she wouldn't go near the chew.  I started tossing the almost gone bully sticks into an old plastic bowl while I chewed on a solution.  I came up with a fix that worked for Mardi, and would probably work well for other small jawed canines.
     I drilled a hole into the end of the bully stick, then I hung the nub on some satin cord.  I suppose any string, cord, or wire will do.  I have miles of satin cord from my kumihimo supplies, so I decided to use one of the ugly colors for this project.  I also thought that satin cord would be more comfortable to hold while Mardi chewed and tugged.  So far, this is working nicely.  Only a minimal amount of the stick goes into the trash can.  Sometimes Mardi chews through the cord and I have to retrieve the last little bit of bully stick from her mouth - not a big deal for a dog mom.

I drilled a hole.  I probably could have made the hole closer to the end.

I used satin cord left over from a kumihimo project, but you could use just about anything.

Thread the cord through the hole and tie a knot.

Mardi says, "Gimme, gimme."