The ORKA Flyer: Great Chew Toy (Just Not A Great Disc)

    In light of the fact that Valentine's was this week (and I forgot to say happy Valentine's to everyone), I thought I would make this post center around my husband.

   As many of you know, I am always on a quest for the perfect frisbee/flying disc dog toy.  Though I think I've come pretty close to finding it with the Hartz Tuff Stuff Flyer, the Tuffy Ultimate Rings and the Kong Frisbee, my all-college Ultimate Frisbee champion husband seems to think I need to keep looking.   His biggest gripe is that my soft "unofficial frisbees" don't fly "reliably" enough.  That may be true dear, but they work just fine for me...Enough with the familial discord, I invariably keep buying discs for him to test out with the Cassie dog.

   Last week, before the cold-that-will-not-end set in, we were at Target together in the pet aisle buying chewies and my easily distracted husband picked out his own flying disc that he felt "looked better than the useless one's you pick out." Such a kind and supportive man.


   His disc of choice was the Petstages ORKA Flyer and my initial reaction was impressed.  Off the bat I thought the ORKA looked durable.  It's made of a chewy-soft clear rubbery material that the ORKA brand is based upon.  I was pretty sure that even Cassie wouldn't be able to take it apart easily.   It was bendy enough not to hurt my hands/thighs when it was returned and looked easy enough to throw, being that it has a smaller circumference than a regular frisbee.  Like the Kong Flyer it lacks a hole in the middle a feature that I tend to enjoy in a dog disc, but that Chris thinks "slows the disc down" and makes it unreliable.

 The second we were in the door Chris made straight for the backyard and I waited for his official verdict on the new toy...he and Cassie were only outside a few minutes when Chris was back (demonstrably dogless).   His review (and subsequently mine) was this: the disc is too heavy to fly fast or far and the rubber came out of the box slightly warped, making it unpredictable.  That, however, was the least of his complaints.  The biggest problem was trying to get the disc back from the dog after she made off with it.  Cassie has always been a pretty good retriever, bounding back to us excitedly and sometimes slamming into us with all that Aussie energy.  With the ORKA Flyer she didn't seem to want to come back, instead she preferred to lie in the grass and happily chew on the edges of the disc.  From the video you can see that I've had to walk over to her to take it away and then when she goes to fetch it, she just stands there mesmerized (sorry about the grainy focus of my old camera).

   A week on we are still allowing her to have her way with Flyer and it still has not a single tooth mark.  It is incredibly durable and easy to clean and many other wonderful things, except a good frisbee disc.  Lesson:  If you want a great long lasting chew-toy the ORKA Flyer is a great option.  If, however, you want to play a wonderful and tiring game of frisbee with your dog...you should probably look somewhere else.