Chelsea, our puppy, is never happier than when chewing.
Plastic bottles, pine cones, sticks, rubber bands, wet paper towels, squeak toys, rawhide bones, lengths of rope, long-lost odd socks — all become fodder for She Who Chews.
By this, I don’t mean to say Chelsea is destructive. She is very trainable; she does not chew shoes, slippers, rugs, or furniture. I mean only to indicate that her primary approach to the world involves mastication. Chelsea doesn’t get to know ya … she gets to gnaw ya.
Our nightly Tivo session quickly devolves into a wrestling match if Chelsea isn’t distracted with a rawhide bone. Without a chew toy, she’s all wiggles. With a chew toy, she lies on her back, legs in the air, and smacks away like a baby with a bottle.
While rawhide bones are a great thing, think twice about those spicy-flavored ones sold by Petsmart. To put it delicately: a taco-flavored chew toy just before bed seems to be a very bad idea indeed. I know this, because this morning, when we went to wake Chelsea, we discovered a generous, er, deposit.
The odor alone made my eyes water. I turned to Clyde. “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Let’s just close that door and never go back into that part of the house again.”
One sign of how bad things were: Clyde, without hesitation, said, “Fine with me.”
The clean-up — a process involving a mop, Clorox, scrubbing pads, Formula 409, paper towels, orange-scented wipes, and a Swiffer — didn’t take as long as I feared. In fact, as I tidied up, it occured to me that there’s an advantage to starting the day this way.
Whatever the rest of the morning holds, it pretty much has to be better than this.
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