I have seen those “Invincible” squeaker snakes in stores for a while and I have been pretty curious about them. Are they really as durable as they sound and are the squeakers really still capable of squeaking if punctured. Well, I was lucky enough to get an Invincible snake for Christmas in a secret Santa exchange among a group of doggie friends. This toy quickly became a house favorite amongst the dogs (I feel like the more annoying the squeaker, the more popular the toy, but that’s a different blog post).

Well, I really feel like I should give everyone who owns this toy a bit of a warning because we had a really scary moment with it recently. Last week foster puppy, Jethro was playing with this toy under close supervision. I got up to grab something on the other side of the room and I heard this awful crunching sound… I looked around and couldn’t figure out where it came from. A moment later I noticed Jethro chewing on something… I opened his mouth and saw a tiny laceration and two really sharp shards of plastic. He had crunched the rattle in the tail of the snake and pulled out the shards of plastic and started chewing on them (one of the shards was over an inch long and sharp as could be)!! I took the snake and cut open the tail to take out the pieces of the rattle to prevent further injury.

I was really caught off guard. Kyjen, the company who makes this toy is a company I typically trust and have used many many of their toys for years. I was shocked that they would sell a toy with such a huge safety oversight. I mean, if I had not been right on top of him, he could have very easily swallowed the large and sharp shards of plastic.

The good news is that I contacted the company and they had gotten a similar complaint a few weeks prior and had already gone to their manufacturer and removed the rattle from the design and newer snakes will be made without the rattle. Their extremely prompt response to the potential dangers definitely reassured me that the company was one that could be trusted. They asked how my foster puppy was doing and apologized very sincerely for the accident before offering to send me an “Invincible” Gecko which does not have the rattle (which I accepted and received in the mail very quickly).

Other than the rattle issue, this has been (and continues to be) a favorite toy in the house. It’s held up reasonably well considering the abuse it takes. It’s missing the tongue, an eye, and now the tip of the tail but other than that it has remained intact! This is a toy, minus the rattle part, that we highly suggest and have really enjoyed (we also LOVE the Kyjen “Egg Babies” toys–Shayne LOVES to hunt out squeakers and these toys allow her to remove squeakers without ruining the toys forever).

So, for those of you who have the “Invincible Snake” with the rattle in the tail, be very careful. If your dog cracks the rattle, I suggest preemptively cutting open the end of the tail and removing all the broken pieces of the rattle to prevent any injury. If your dog leaves the rattle alone, it shouldn’t pose any safety risk at all–just check it periodically and know how your dog typically interacts with toys.