Potato Dog

Hi! For my instructable, I chose to make a potato dog. I chose this because I fed my dog a little bit of my hash browns this morning and he loved them. So when my teacher introduced this project, I immediately thought of him and laughed to myself. My dog, Boomer, is my best friend and I'm so glad that I can make a replica of him!

3 potatoes

A handful of toothpicks

1 vegetable peeler

1 black permanent marker

1 knife

Gather up all your supplies for the project. Make sure you have a neat and organized place to do this.

Peel all of your potatoes with your potato peeler. If you do not have a potato peeler, you can use your knife.

The longest potato is going to be the dog's body. The other 2 potatoes are going to be for the legs, tail, head, ears, nose, and dog bowl. Grab your longest potato and set it to the side. Next, grab one of the other 2 potatoes, and cut rectangles out of it to be the legs. You can make these your preferred length. Make sure both sides of the legs have a clean cut, so that they will be able to hold up the dog. After that, Grab 2 toothpicks and break them in half. You will use these to attach the legs to the body. Stick about half the broken toothpick in the preferred small end of each leg. Then, stick the other half of the toothpick in the long potato that you set aside earlier (body).

Next, you are going to cut out a tail for your dog. You can do this similarly to your legs, just make it thinner and a little longer. You can make the tail curvy or straight. To make it curvy, just cut the potato unevenly as shown in the picture. Then, take half a toothpick and repeat the process for attaching the legs, but put it in the back. You're going to want to insert it at an upwards angle, so that the tail goes down (see picture).

Next, you will be making the head. To do this, you want to grab your last potato and cut a sphere out, this will be part of the head. You also want to cut out a super short and stubby rectangle, this will be the neck. This time, you want to take your stubby rectangle and stick a toothpick through it, and attach it the the body. Next, you want to attach the head to the other end of the toothpick.

To make the ears, you are going to cut very small triangles. These should be about a half an inch. Then, you are going to get a toothpick and break it in fourths. Insert the ears into each side of the head, but be sure that there is no extra toothpick sticking out. Next, you are going to make the nose. For this, you are going to cut our a semi-sphere. You are going to take half a toothpick and insert the nose to the head.

To create the dog bowl, all you need is a middle chunk of a potato and a knife. All you are going to do is scoop out the insides of one side of the potato, making sure not to take out the bottom (see image for help).

For the final step, all you are going to do is draw with your permanent marker. You're going to want to make eyes, a nose, and write the dog's name on the dog bowl. And then you're done!!!