You will learn when a toy stops being one, and which parts to check before leaving it out on the floor.
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A toy gets bought once and stays in the basket for years. That is where it turns into something else: a worn object, freely available, that nobody looks at any more.
The risk is not the chewing, it is the catch: a ball taken in mid-air can pass behind the tongue in one movement, and there is nobody behind it to catch it.
The rule can be checked without the dog: the ball has to be visibly wider than the back of its throat, and it must not fit whole inside the closed mouth.
So the size depends on the animal, not on the packaging. A ball that is perfect for a terrier is a risk for a large dog, and foams that squash under a jaw fall into the same problem.
A squeaker is a piece of plastic, stuffing is a mass of fibre. The toy is built to last a while, not to hold out against an animal whose whole aim is to open it.
The day the seam gives, the object changes nature. It gets taken away, not sewn up: the dog has spent weeks learning that opening this toy was the game.
A swallowed strand does not behave like food. It can stay where it is, gather, and that kind of incident is a well-known reason for an emergency visit.
Trim the ends as they come undone, while the core of the rope still holds. Once that core shows, the toy is finished.
With a cat the question starts on day one: string, ribbon, wool and dental floss are not left out between play sessions.
The rule that circulates among vets is done by hand: if you cannot mark the object with a thumbnail, and if tapping it against your knee hurts, it is harder than the enamel of a tooth.
A fractured tooth is neither visible nor audible. The dog keeps eating, sometimes chewing on one side, and the pain goes unnoticed for a long time. So the check is made on the object, beforehand.
Nobody throws a toy away. Yet it is the one object in the house whose upkeep consists of putting it in the bin at the right moment.
The sort is done by hand, once a month: what moves, what tears, what pulls out between two fingers, what has lost a part.
Keeping it because the animal adores it is exactly the case where it should be replaced with the same model.
Permanent access wears out two things at once: the object, and the animal's interest in it. A toy that is always there becomes part of the furniture.
A rotation, with a closed box and a few pieces out at a time, keeps both intact. It has a second effect that is more useful still: everything that comes out of the box passes under your eyes before it goes back into a mouth.