Outward Hound Hide-A-Squirrel Puzzle Plush (Small) Review

Some toys have to teach a dog how to play with them. This one comes pre-installed. Dachshunds were bred to go down burrows after badgers and flush out whatever they found, and roughly five seconds after you set down a plush log with squirrel tails poking out of it, a dachshund understands the assignment completely. The nose goes in, the shoulders follow, the log flips, and a squirrel gets extracted and squeaked with tremendous professional satisfaction. Then you stuff the squirrels back in and the shift starts over. It's the cheapest reliable dopamine loop we've found for burrow-bred breeds.

The Small is the right size for dogs in the 10–20 lb range — the squirrels are big enough that they can't be swallowed by a small dog but small enough to carry around in a mini dachshund mouth, which matters because carrying the prize around is half the fun. Larger dogs should size up to the Large or XL, where the squirrels scale accordingly. The refill economy is the quiet genius here: squirrels inevitably take casualties, and Outward Hound sells replacement packs, so an $11 log can stay in service for years. You can also freelance — tennis balls and other small plush fit in the log just fine.

Standard plush rules apply, and we'd be doing you a disservice to skip them. Each squirrel contains a squeaker, and a dog who breaches a seam can pull out stuffing or worse; supervise play, and retire any squirrel that's been operated on. Some high-drive dogs also speedrun the puzzle — if your dog empties the log in under a minute, raise the difficulty by hiding squirrels around the room instead, which converts a thirty-second toy into a fifteen-minute nose-work game. For the price of a fast-food lunch, few toys work this hard.