Bully-Stick Holders Reviewed

We loved the idea from the moment we first saw a bully-stick holder, the Bow Wow Buddy, which we reviewed in the November 2022 issue of WDJ. In that review, we said that the product wasn’t perfect—but it provided a measure of safety for dogs who were prone to swallowing the too-long end of a bully stick.

It was entirely predictable (and, frankly, welcome) that the Bow Wow Buddy inspired a wave of copycat pet-product makers who have brought their own designs to the bully-stick-holding task. When we searched for bully-stick holders to review, our Google search results contained dozens of products. This was surprising to us, because we’ve found only one stick-securing product in pet supply stores.

This told us that none of the available contenders are clear winners—products that are perfect for their intended use. If there were such a thing, it would be likely to quickly establish a foothold in pet-supply stores. Instead, we had to gather the best-looking products from a wide variety of sources, including the makers’ own websites.

We’re sorry to report that after testing eight of the most promising contenders, our conclusion is that there still isn’t a perfect bully stick-holder available to owners who want to prevent their dogs from swallowing large sections of their chewies.

Nevertheless, we like the advances that have been made in materials and design and we appreciate anything that even marginally improves the safety of such an enjoyable (but slightly risky) recreational activity for dogs. All of the products we tested reduce the risk of swallowing long end-pieces of sticks or chews—they are just not yet safe enough or chew-resistant enough to use without supervising the dog while chewing. We found and will use our favorite—the Bully Grip—but under direct supervision.

There Are Two Types of Bully-Stick Holders

As previously mentioned, the Bow Wow Buddy was the first bully-stick-holder we ever saw. Its design strategy has been copied in theory, if not in exact practice, in about half of the products we tested. The concept involves using some sort of mechanism to secure the dog’s chewie in something that’s not chewable, sort of like clamping a piece of wood in a vise. I’ll refer to these products as “vise types.”

A second class of products take a different tactic; they use rubbery materials in a variety of designs to attempt to secure bully sticks with friction. These products are made with either rubber or “Zogoflex” (a rubbery material made by West Paw). We’ll call these “friction types.”

Pros and Cons of Each Product Type

We bought four products of each design type for a total of eight bully-stick holders to test. Each type has advantages and drawbacks, as do the individual products themselves.

All of the vise-type products we tested are made of hard nylon. This material enables the products to contain a very secure tightening mechanism of some kind, but the downside of the plastic-like material is that it can be scored into sharp ridges if the dog chews on it—something that dogs are prone to doing once they chew the bully stick down to the last piece that they can’t extract from the holder.

In 2022, after our test dog chewed on the original Bow Wow Buddy a few times—we were clearly negligent in the supervision department—we ended up throwing it away so neither our dog nor we would get cut by the sharp edges of the chew marks he left in it.

The rubbery friction-type products don’t get scored if a dog chews on them; in fact, they all resist chewing to a great degree and can actually be used as a fetch and chew item themselves! But because they are soft, they can’t contain any type of mechanism for holding the bully sticks in an absolutely secure way. Strong dogs who use their paws to hold the stick-holder and their teeth to pull on the sticks can remove bully sticks from these products. Not all dogs are forward-thinking enough to extract the sticks when they are long enough to get a firm grasp on them (but one of our test dogs is).

What it comes down to—what it almost always comes down to—is that you have to supervise your dog with these items, and take them away as soon as the dog has finished chewing the chewie, or reloading the chewie if your dog managed to remove it too quickly from the holder. These products make bully-stick chewing safer, not 100% safe. Supervision is still required.

However, if this means that a dog can chew a bully stick or other kind of chewie down to a single one-inch piece, we’re thrilled. Bully sticks can cost as much as $1 or more per inch! One of our tests dogs is prone to quickly swallowing a high-value item if someone comes near him (rather than risking having to give it up or even losing it in a trade); to prevent this, we usually have to take those sticks away from him when they are still 5 or 6 inches in length! The bully-stick holders pay for themselves just by preventing the need to throw away those dangerously swallowable 3-, 4-, or 5-inch end pieces.

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Review of Vise-Type Bully-Stick Holders

Two of the vise-type bully-stick holders we tested have a piece that can be tightened against the bully stick by turning a knob. The knob in each product is positioned in a recessed space at the end of the product, so the dog can’t access it. But the piece that presses against the bully stick or other chew item is different.

We give huge props to Bow Wow Buddy for innovating what we believe is the first bully-stick holder on the market—but we don’t think its peg goes far enough toward the V-shaped surface on the other side of the opening to secure thin chews.

The Bully Stick Safety Holder from Bully Bunches also has a recessed knob that tightens the piece that secures the chew item, but this piece can be tightened so far that it would hold even very flat, jerky-style chews, as well as thick or blocky chews such as yak-cheese blocks.

However, both of these products are vulnerable to chewing on the end with the knob (and ultimately making it difficult to turn the knob) if the dog is unsupervised.

The other two vise-type products (GoSports Chew Champ and Tall Tails’ Bully Stick Holder for Dogs) take a different tack: The two ends of the product screw together to press a peg against the chewie or screw apart for loading the product. Our test dogs were not able to unscrew or loosen the mechanism, even when we left them fake-unsupervised.

We think these two products would continue to operate well even if they were chewed, but they would still be prone to getting scored by dog teeth, creating sharp ridges in the material. Also, neither of these two can be used with particularly thin bully sticks; the space between the peg and the wall it presses the chewie against is too big.

Of all the products we tested, the product that holds chew items the most securely, is the Bully Stick Safety Holder. It also can accommodate a wider range of chew items than any other the other products we tested.

Review of Friction-Type Bully-Stick Holders

The only one of the friction-type products that secures a bully stick as well as the vise-type holders is the Bully Grip. Plus, it’s made of a highly chew-resistant rubber, so a temporarily unsupervised dog who chews on the Bully Grip itself is unlikely to damage it. Please note that it’s really difficult to insert bully sticks into the Bully Grip’s tight opening, and the larger the bully stick, the more difficult it is to insert.

The Chewzie (made by Best Bully Sticks) has a similar design and is also made of chew-resistant rubber. While it can accommodate a wider variety of sizes and types of chews and is easier to load, it’s less secure than the Bully Grip. It wouldn’t hold very skinny bully sticks.

The last two products we tested are not exclusively marketed as bully-stick holders; rather, that task is listed as one of the potential uses for these products. The Quizl (made by West Paw) and the Chew Toy (made by Earth Rated) are both marketed primarily as (ahem) chew toys. They both have various openings that would admit and hold a bully stick or other slender chew item (such as a smallish “No-Hide” or rawhide roll). The larger the chew item, the more securely they would hold it; they can’t hold very thin chews.

The Chew Toy is made of rubber; the Quizl is made of West Paw’s proprietary “Zogoflex” material, which West Paw says is non-toxic, FDA-compliant, and BPA-, latex-, and phthalate-free. Our test dogs enjoyed playing with and chewing on both of these toys even when they weren’t holding chews—and that’s good, because they are the least secure of the products we tested.

Overall Winner: Best Bully-Stick Holder

Picking a sole winner from between these two types of bully-stick holders is difficult, because the strengths and weaknesses of each category are diametrically opposite. But if we could buy only one product, we’d choose the Bully Grip. It’s the most secure and chew-resistant product we tested—and makes a fairly fun fetch toy when it’s not holding a bully stick.

In fact, after our test dogs chewed one bully stick down to a tiny nub that was still held tightly in the product’s rubber “teeth,” that bit of stinky stick increased the attractiveness of the Bully Grip as a toy; our test dogs played with and carried that toy around on and off for days without managing to extract that nub. Hey! A product that made a costly treat last longer! That’s our winner.