Product Review: BarkMade Circus Elephant

This BarkMade Circus Elephant stuffy is tougher than it looks! It is available exclusively from BarkShop, and arrived in our July Allergy-Friendly BarkBox. The circus elephant comes in two sizes, ours is the smaller 6" version and the larger is 7.5".

Photo by Erin Koski

I know that BarkShop's exclusive toys are made by various other companies, like our BarkMade Shooting Star made by Swag Company for BarkBox. The company didn't announce who made this one though, and somebody ate the tag on ours so I guess we'll never know unless I get the urge to email the company.

For a toy that has gotten so much love, this one has held up remarkably well. Brisbane loved it immediately, and Sisci arrived a month later and was also immediately drawn to it. The website says this toy is good for smaller pups, but Ru mostly only likes gigantic stuffies and has ignored it entirely.

So far the stuffy has been shaken, tossed, gnawed, endlessly squeaked, and left out in the rare California rain. After a trip through the wash, it was as good as new.

Photo by Erin Koski

Pros: Sturdy enough to not split at the seams from normal dog play. Excessively cute. Seriously. Just look at it. I think it's the little circus hat.

Cons: Probably not sturdy enough to handle intentional destruction.

Bottom Line: Even if my dogs ignored it, the Circus Elephant would look adorable laying on the floor or in the toy pile.

The July Allergy-Friendly BarkBox

The theme of July's BarkBox is the Circus! This box was a long time in coming, well over a week. We got five items, but both big bags of treats are not Briz-safe. He's allergic to chicken, turkey, duck, and eggs. The allergy-friendly BarkBox is not supposed to contain anything with chicken, turkey, beef, corn, wheat, or soy (unless they mess something up...). Unfortunately, that sometimes still leaves us with a box full of duck and egg treats.

This month we got a bag of Grain Free Roast Duck treats from Lucky Dog. These are apparently brand new and not even available on their website yet. They're made in the USA. Lucky dogs that belong to my coworkers, these will be going to them.

Those My Doggy Cheesy Bite cookies are soft and probably nice-smelling. Know why they're soft? Eggs. More cookies for my coworkers' dogs. Also made in the USA.

The only edible thing in this box fo Briz was the Emerald Pet Piggy Twizz...Twizzie? Twizzy? The chews are called Piggy Twizzies, I'm not totally sure what the singular of that should be. It didn't last very long, but Brisbane certainly enjoyed it.

I had a lot of trouble finding the website for Encore, the maker of this firehose flyer. It was on the fourth page of Google search results! This one isn't particularly attractive for Brisbane and Ru, but the current foster pup enjoys carrying it around the house.

My favorite thing in this month's box is the BarkMade Circus Elephant stuffy. Way too cute! I love cute stuffed dog toys, I consider them part of my interior decorating. The elephant looks great on the floor with all our dinosaurs. Overall this box was sort of disappointing, with two big bags of treats I'll have to give away. The elephant helps with that, a little.