Relative Something

Our dog, Asher is a chew toy destroyer. He loves to rip things to pieces. Since he also shows a passion for tug-of-war, rope toys give him a chance to do both tugging and destroying. Cyndie bought him a “ball” made of rope which was a genius idea for a toy.

He showed moderate interest in it until one section finally came loose so he could begin to shred it. Since then, his interest soared and he thrills in bringing it to us for some tugging that leads to holding it for him to chomp the unraveling rope.

Asher also takes great pleasure in tearing the stuffing out of fabric toys and then shredding the fabric. Watching him do this to something Cyndie just bought causes us mixed feeling$.

Well, it causes me mixed feelings. I love seeing him have fun but the idea of destroying something we just spent a lot of money on bothers my miserly mindset.

That led to an idea. I asked Cyndie if she would consider sewing together some “toys” out of found materials we have at home. I brought her a short length of natural rope and Cyndie produced a collection of heavy fabric pieces. We also dreamed up the idea of putting a hard chew he’s shown meager interest in, inside one of the toys Cyndie was sewing together.

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Cyndie then put one of his squeaky balls inside a little pillow she made.

He loved it! Surprisingly, he didn’t immediately rip the new toys to shreds. He mostly seemed to be trying to shake the pillow to death. The long, skinny thing had scrap pieces from a store-bought stuffed squirrel he chewed to pieces sewn onto each end. That seemed to fascinate him.

He spent a little more time trying to rip into that one, but it was still mostly intact as of last night.

With days of rain (plus predictions for slushy snow tomorrow) keeping us indoors for long spans of time lately, there haven’t been a lot of opportunities to get him running around outside. We keep trying to find other ways to expend some of Asher’s high-octane energy.

Methodically destroying sanctioned homemade chew toys gives him a good combination of mental stimulation with the tactile reward of chomping on something interesting.

I just hope we aren’t conditioning him to seek out any old thing lying around the house whenever that urge to gnaw on something shows up.

Meanwhile, I just finished putting together a small wooden puzzle to start my season.

Let it rain and snow. We’re good to go indoors.

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