How Doggy Skeet Came to Be

In January of 2022, at the edge of New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest, it was too cold to go outside to play anything with our 2-year-old Czech German Shepherd. With endless energy, Nax Aites Bohemia (Naxy) barked seemingly constantly and was bouncing off the walls as all of us were bound for Crazyland. 

Wendy and I were new to dog-ownership and failed to understand that he needed several hours of play each day, his voice broadcasting what his body needed.

We tried putting him in his kennel, but this made him bark more determinedly. Our human voices reflected our own angst, as we struggled to not yell at him. The negative energy generated by our apparent lack of a solution to Naxy’s incessant barking and aggressive body language caused my wife, Wendy, and I to second-guess our decision to get him. We wanted this highly stressful experience just to end.

We called the guy who sold Naxy to us. A significant investment of $16,000, we wanted a professionally-trained security dog who would attack on command with just one word; not a professional barker! He was very disappointed that Naxy wasn’t working out for us, and even said, “Oh, this is not good.” He begrudgingly said that he would try to find a new owner for Naxy.

Naxy’s high energy wasn’t about to let up, as we waited for a buyer to appear. It seemed that his barking intensified around bed time and I, exasperated, tricked him into going into his kennel in the living room. He barked even more so and attacked the inside of his prison. We laid in bed for just 5 minutes, and Naxy barked and growled as if he was a wild animal. Both of us yelling for him to stop had zero positive effect; it stressed us out even more. I jumped out of bed with determination to show Naxy who his boss was, and when I got to the kennel, I saw that he had literally chewed apart the kennel door latch on the inside, and was about to make his great escape.

A creative problem-solver at heart, I then realized that it was Wendy and I who needed to relent. We needed to better understand this problem. I knew that doing the same thing we’d always done with Naxy would only lead to getting what we always got: failure.

It was I who gave in first.

I let Naxy out of his confinement, since that too failed to solve our collective problem. I removed Naxy’s bedding from the kennel and put it right next to my side of the bed. Thankfully, he relaxed. I laid next to him, cuddled him and gently spoke words of comfort to him, petting him and lightly scratching his belly. I kissed him on his snout and he let out a long exhale.

The next day was no different. If Naxy wasn’t eating or sleeping, he was barking. We even failed to accurately interpret his bark when he needed to go out to relieve himself and, soon, he developed the habit of peeing and pooping on the floors.

At my wits end, I picked up a used Amazon box and threw it in Naxy’s direction. He attacked the box and tore it up, ripping a square flap right off in a single tug. I grabbed it and flung it like a Frisbee back at him. He caught it mid-air, then dropped it at my feet, barking as he traded stares with me, and the cardboard on the floor. It became obvious what he needed, so I picked it up again and threw it across the living room. It flew through the air with a wobble. Naxy leapt 4-feet off the floor and snatched it from its flight path. His menacing teeth trapped it, making a loud “crunch”, as he bit through it. He shook his head wildly to dislodge it from his fangs.

The proverbial light bulb came on in my head.

I got a utility knife, stainless-steel kitchen bowl and plastic cutting board and cut out a dozen 9-1/2” diameter cardboard discs and threw them across the living room, Naxy in hot pursuit. Their flight characteristics suggested that they required a specific throwing technique, as a Frisbee does. Naxy lunged for each of them, taking them down effortlessly and accurately. His reflex was that of a fox, or coyote catching a bird.

I made fifty more cardboard discs dimensioned from three different stainless-steel kitchen bowl diameters. I cleared a larger area in the living room so Naxy wouldn’t hurt himself, then threw the whole pile of discs. Naxy caught most of them with ease.

In little time, I learned how to better throw the discs with an outward-from-the-hip flick-of-the-wrist, so they would leave my hand like skeet (clay pigeons) being propelled from a launcher at a shooting range. Naxy was the shots being fired. Bam, bam, bam. His bolt forward and upward was becoming predictable, and I was getting the hang of where to intercept his mouth with the discs in midair.

“Doggy Skeet” was born.

Together, Naxy and I were developing into an effective partnership in this new activity that challenged his agility, endurance and intellectual focus, and my aim and technique. Soon, this newfound activity was feeling much like a genuine team sport. Like any physical sport, Naxy was definitely getting much-needed exercise and I was too – with a quick pace, I retrieved each Skeet, walking back and forth and bending over for 50 Skeet, before Naxy could get them and chew them up – following each round. After four rounds, Naxy was lying on the floor, panting heavily.

As Naxy rested, I picked up the cardboard discs and put them into an appropriately-sized scrap Amazon box, then, set them atop the refrigerator out of his reach. I had the idea to make Skeet of different shapes. I’d used all of the cardboard that I selected, to make them with imperfect, even straight edges. Some came out bent at the fold of a flap. Others were square on one side and round on the other. I cut out square shapes, triangular and rectangular, even star-shaped.

A while later, Naxy saw them in my hand and jumped up and barked at me to throw the new shapes. As I did, I noticed that they each had their own identifiable shape-determined flight characteristics, which made Naxy all the more interested. He leapt for the star-shaped skeet and a corner poked him in the eye, so I reshaped the corners to a radius. The different shapes definitely flew differently than the round ones, and these simple designs were amazing, in flight and with the affect they had on Naxy.

The cardboard discs were light-weight and even when they were stopped by a picture on the wall, pen/pencil holder on my desk, or floor lamp (I hadn’t completely mastered my aim), they did no damage whatsoever! Certainly, a Frisbee played indoors would have a different outcome, anyone could guess.

Immediately, Doggy Skeet with Naxy became a daily event for us in winter, and whenever he let us know that he needed exercise, fun and focus, we took out the box of cardboard shapes and threw them to him. Naxy knows exactly what I mean when I say “Doggy Skeet?” It’s my invitation for him to play, and he usually barks in agreement. We quickly realized that we found a way to keep him from barking at us incessantly. Instead, he barked at times at the Skeet as if they were prey.

A week following my call to the dealer from whom we purchased Naxy, I was deeply saddened by the idea of getting rid of this beautiful dog. So quickly after creating Doggy Skeet, his demeanor changed for the better, and we learned what bark of his signaled that he needed to go out to relieve himself. His interaction with me as we ran together on the snowmobile trail through the mountainous woods, and as we played round after round of Doggy Skeet in the house, proved that we had become great friends.

I said to Wendy, ”We can’t give up Naxy! That would be such a mean thing to do to him.” I cried like a boy who was about to lose his dog, his buddy, his best friend. We decided to keep him.

We’ve now had Naxy for a little over two years. We’ve learned to recognize his body language when he needs to exercise, play and have intellectual stimulation and that’s when we take out the Skeet and Naxy gets his yah-yahs out.

When Wendy and I need to be in the house – because it’s raining, or snowing, or too cold, or too hot outside, or it’s dark and throwing a ball is not an option, or we just need to get things done indoors – we get the box of Doggy Skeet out and in an instant, Naxy jumps to the occasion. I can even throw the Skeet backwards, over my head while I am working on my computer, and Naxy catches virtually every single one. (I’m even playing Skeet with Naxy as I write this!)

In an 8-foot by 8-foot area indoors, on a 1” foam-rubber mat with a rug over it, Naxy’s landing is cushioned, he is protected, satisfied, and often down-for-the-count napping under my desk, following just 15 minutes of Doggy Skeet.

I’ve been an independent inventor since 1996, and to-date, Doggy Skeet is one of my most cherished inventions. It has solved a definitive problem for me and for Wendy, and obviously for Naxy, too. My patent lawyer believes that I will be issued patent(s) and trademark(s) for Doggy Skeet. And I know that sometimes the best inventions are the simplest ones, which is why I came up with “So Simple. So Fun!” to communicate a lot in just a few words.

After two years playing Skeet with Naxy, we’ve realized that this is not an activity for dogs only. No! Wendy and I have great fun throwing Skeet to each other, across the living room in our house, and with Naxy in the middle! We also play out in the driveway or yard when weather permits. Soon, we will be trying Skeet with stir-crazy cats! Stay tuned for that outcome.

Without Doggy Skeet in our busy lifestyle, it would be very difficult to find ample time to provide for the needs of a stir-crazy dog. I wonder how others with dogs and cats even get by. I once had a girlfriend who put her two labs in their kennel and left them there for ten hours every workday! Had she not, then, the dogs would chew everything in sight to bits. When she got home after work, she’d let the dogs outside and feed them, then never play with them. Boy, were they hard to handle! I’m confident that labs and others will love catching Doggy Skeet, especially trained bird dogs.

I’m wondering if that with lack of physical, emotional, intellectual stimulation, every dog must be a major stressor in their owner’s life, that the dog, too, surely must be unhappy. I wouldn’t be able to handle such a high-energy dog as Naxy, if it were not for Doggy Skeet, and we would have sold him. We are confident that the same will be the case for other dog owners, once they discover this “So Simple. So Fun!” affordable product that can make all the difference in your relationship with your dog.