Can You Wash Dog Toys in the Washing Machine? A Vet's Honest Fork-in-the-Road

There’s a fork in the road every dog owner reaches eventually, usually while standing over a laundry basket with a slobbery stuffed fox in one hand: toss it in with the towels, or toss it out. I get some version of this question constantly, and the honest answer splits cleanly in two directions depending on what the toy is actually made of.

I remember a visit with a twelve-week-old cavapoo named Biscuit, maybe eight pounds soaking wet, whose owner brought her in because she’d gone off her breakfast for two days running. Nothing dramatic — no vomiting, no diarrhea — just picking at the bowl and then walking away. When I asked what had changed in the house, the owner mentioned Biscuit had a favorite plush hedgehog that had been in heavy rotation since the first week home, dragged through the yard, chewed on the porch, never once washed. We didn’t find anything obstructive on exam, and her appetite came back within a day on its own, but that toy went into the wash that afternoon and became a standing rule in that house. It’s a small case, one dog, not a data point — but it’s the kind of scene that sticks with you because it’s so ordinary. Puppies chew on the same object for weeks, and nobody thinks to ask what’s living in the fabric until something nudges them to look.

Sort by material first, not by how dirty it looks

The washing machine question isn’t really about the machine. It’s about what the toy is made of, because that determines whether water and agitation help or hurt. Plush, cloth, and most rope toys generally tolerate a machine wash Preventive Vet: on cold and gentle — a mesh laundry bag keeps stuffing and squeakers from working loose in the drum, and the delicate or hand-wash cycle is gentler than a standard one. Hard rubber and plastic toys are a different animal entirely; those generally do better hand-washed in hot soapy water or run through the top rack of a dishwasher rather than tumbled in a washer, since the machine’s spin cycle can crack seams that were never built for it.

Where I’d draw a firm line: skip scented dryer sheets and skip high heat. Heat is what tends to warp squeaker mechanisms and melt the glue holding some stuffing seams together, so cold or warm water and air-drying protect the toy’s structure a lot better than a hot cycle does. And detergent choice isn’t a minor detail here — a toy comes out of the wash and goes straight back into a dog’s mouth, so whatever residue clings to the fibers is something that dog will be licking and gnawing for weeks.

Why the detergent matters more than the wash cycle

I think about this the way I think about a diet change: the ingredient matters as much as the amount. A fragrance-free, pet-safe detergent used sparingly, with an extra rinse cycle, leaves far less residue than a heavily scented formula run through once. This isn’t just a preference thing. Laundry pods in particular are a genuine ingestion hazard for dogs — the ASPCA has flagged them specifically because the concentrated detergent inside can cause serious stomach upset and airway irritation if a dog bites into one, and dogs account for the large majority of pod-related poison control cases because the pods are colorful, chewy-looking, and just the right size to bat around. That risk is about a dog getting into the pod itself, not about washed toys, but it’s a useful reminder that whatever touches your dog’s toy fabric is worth choosing carefully, since a slobbered-on toy essentially reintroduces that residue to the dog’s mouth on a loop.

I’ll also say plainly: I don’t love scented detergents for pet laundry generally, plush toys included. Dogs experience the world through smell far more than we do, and a heavily perfumed toy is a strange thing to hand back to an animal whose whole job, in play, is mouthing and carrying that object around. A mild, unscented formula does the actual work — lifting oil, saliva, and dander out of the fibers — without adding something a dog now has to tolerate at close range for the next several weeks.

What’s actually growing on a toy that never gets washed

This is where I’d ground the case for washing in something more concrete than “it looks grubby.” A 2011 NSF International study ranked pet toys among the most germ-laden household items, and testing on unwashed toys has turned up coliform bacteria, staph, yeast, and mold — the kind of buildup that accumulates from drool, dirt, and repeated handling over weeks of play, as Whole Dog Journal has reported. None of that means a dirty toy is an emergency. Most healthy adult dogs handle ordinary environmental bacteria without issue, the same way they handle dirt in the yard. But a young puppy still building out an immune system, or a senior dog managing a chronic GI issue, has a smaller margin — and a toy that’s been chewed daily for a month without a wash is a reasonable place to start tightening up hygiene, alongside the water bowl and the bedding.

A rough cadence I give owners: a light wash every couple of weeks for toys in daily rotation, and sooner than that for anything that’s been outside, dropped near the litter box, or shared with a dog who’s currently sick. It’s not a rigid schedule so much as a habit — the same way you’d rinse a water bowl daily without needing a study to tell you why.

The scene that changed how I frame this for owners

A few years back I worked with an eleven-year-old Lab mix named Otis who’d had two bouts of mild, self-limiting GI upset over a single summer — a day of soft stool, appetite back to normal within 24 hours, nothing that needed more than supportive care both times. His owner had started keeping a log by then, the way people do once something happens twice, and when we went through it together, both episodes lined up within a day or two of Otis getting his favorite tug rope back after it had sat in a muddy yard for most of an afternoon. I want to be careful here: a rope toy sitting in mud is not a controlled experiment, and I can’t tell you that’s definitively what caused either episode. But it was consistent enough, twice, that we made the rope part of the regular wash rotation instead of a toy that only got attention when it looked filthy — cold cycle, mesh bag, air-dried before it went back in his mouth. Whether or not the rope was the exact cause, the change cost nothing and the summer that followed was quieter. That’s usually how I frame this for owners: you don’t need certainty to justify a habit that’s free and takes five minutes.

Where I land

Wash the plush and cloth toys — cold water, gentle cycle, mesh bag, fragrance-free detergent, full air-dry before they go back into rotation. Hand-wash or dishwasher-clean the hard rubber and plastic ones instead of running them through the washer’s spin cycle, which tends to be harder on seams than the wear from actual chewing. Skip the dryer sheets entirely, and treat any toy that’s been in the mud, the yard, or near a sick housemate as due for a wash sooner rather than on the usual schedule. None of this is about a spotless house. It’s about giving a toy the same basic hygiene you’d give a food bowl, because a dog’s mouth ends up on both about equally often — and while your dog is off making a mess of a fresh toy, this is also a good moment to check whether they’ve actually aged out of the teething stage or still need something built for sore gums, since a wash-and-rotate habit works best paired with toys that actually fit the dog’s current stage.