I did not have a dowel, but I did have a strong straw and two chopsticks which tapered slightly toward their points.
I pushed a chopstick into each end of the the straw until snug.
This created a dowel long enough to reach the bottom of the auto-siphon.
I stood the dowel straight up, put a dab of honey on the top end, and stuck the insert to the top of the dowel so that the two little snap-in prongs were pointing straight up.
Then I turned the tube for the siphon upside down and lowered it down onto the dowel, and snapped the insert into place.
I did not disassemble the straw and chopsticks. I wanted my family to be impressed with my brilliance . But they didn't even notice it, so I had to start leaving it in more prominent locations, like on my wife's pillow.
Eventually my wife did notice, and said "What the **** is this?", and threw it away. We had Japanese food that night and I had to eat it with a spoon.
The thing about being a genius is that your family doesn't always understand you, and you get lonely. Thank goodness I can come to homebrewtalk and connect with other precocious 40-year-old men, many of whom are sober.