where to buy dog pool toys cheap? my whole shopping mess
Man, looked outside yesterday, sun blazing like crazy. My stupid dog, Buck, just panting non-stop near his empty kiddie pool. Figured he needed toys bad, like one of those floating ones, but couldn’t stomach paying $20 for a piece of chewed up plastic later. So yep, gotta find cheap deals.
Started dumb. Walked into Pet Place downtown. Bright lights, fancy displays. Spotted this floating ring thing. Looked perfect. Turned the price tag over…almost choked. $18.99! For what? For my mutt to probably destroy in 5 minutes? Forget it. Left feeling like a sucker. Knew pet store prices are robbery sometimes.
Then thought, duh, gotta hit the discount stores. Rushed over to Value Mart hoping for luck. Wandered past towels, past plates, past garden hoses. Found the pet aisle. Mostly food bags piled up, some stinky flea collars. Not a single pool floaty thing in sight. Asked the bored guy stocking shelves. He shrugged. “We got tennis balls maybe?” Useless. Buck hates tennis balls.
Alright, time to go online. Grabbed my coffee cup, opened the laptop while it wheezed like an old man. Went straight to Big Online Store first. Typed ‘dog pool toys cheap’ real fast. Froze my whole screen. Pages and pages of crap. Shiny ones, noisy ones, bright purple bones. Prices all over the place. Saw some for $5.99! Clicked so fast…only to see that tiny red text: “Shipping: $8.99.” Hah! Total bait. Almost screamed into my coffee. Felt like throwing the laptop.
Took a breath. Remembered some folks talk about specific online pet places having deals. Pulled one up. Annoying pop-up blocked me immediately. “Sign up for 10% off first order!” Whatever. Searched again. Used this thing called search operators? Like putting quotes around stuff to make it specific. “inexpensive floating dog toys” – boom. Fewer results. Found this decent-looking floating frisbee thing. Price was $6.50. Held my breath. Scrolled down… free shipping over $25. Oh come on!
Back to searching on that site, grumbling. Found some rubber stick thing for $4. Added that frisbee. Another squeaky floating ball for $5.25. Cart total? $25.75. That got me the free shipping. Barely scraped it. Not bad. About $5 per toy average. Buck will probably hate one of them, but hey.
While waiting for the checkout page to load, recalled something about that big-box store maybe? The one you need a card for. Checked their app. Filtered to In-Store Only. Saw a floating ring marked $3.97. Seriously!? Drove back out. Rushed inside. The pet section was chaos. Stuff everywhere. Found the box the ring belonged to. Empty. Asked a kid stocking nearby. He pointed vaguely to the top shelf. There it was! One last dusty, slightly dented orange ring, shoved behind some kongs. Grabbed it like treasure. Paid like $4 bucks total.
So end of the day hunting? Got stuff online for ~$25 shipped. Got the lucky $4 ring in person. Took me hours of sweat and frustration. Learned this much:
- Pet Stores: Great to see the junk, awful to pay.
- Discount Stores: Hit or total miss. Mostly miss.
- Online: Total chaos unless you filter hard and watch shipping like a hawk.
- Club Stores: Actually solid if you see it in the app and find it hiding.
Biggest tip? Buy off-season. Saw tons of outdoor dog gear like half off when sorting old listings. Next spring? Shopping in January when Buck’s asleep by the fireplace. Way less headache.