Chew for the Gold

Last post I intro­duced you to my parent’s dog Cassie who is the 70mph Col­lie I am sup­posed to “keep calm” as I pet sit her.  One more thing I can share about try­ing to non-physically exer­cise a dog with a boat load of energy is give ‘em some­thing to chew!

Chew­ing on a favorite stuffed squeaker toy

Chew­ing is a nat­ural dog thing to do.  It’s an all around favorite pas­time for just about every dog I have ever met.  Cassie is no excep­tion.  She gets her­self into this mem­o­rized method­i­cal chew­ing rhythm and closes her eyes.  (I’m sure it’s dog­gie bliss.)  And she can do this with any toy, she’s not picky.  Typ­i­cally she is not offered stuffed toys.  This is sim­ply because she sur­gi­cally de-squeaks them and the inner fluff guts are shared through­out my parent’s entire home.  Don’t get me wrong, she has plenty of other toys to play with at her home and is in no way toy deprived.  Fluff toys that squeak how­ever, are a del­i­cacy when she vis­its my house.

Some dogs are sim­ply not OK with stuffed, fluff toys.  Instead of leav­ing a giant stuff­ing mess, they pre­fer to eat it.  Which means a pos­si­ble block­age and pos­si­ble surgery in your dog’s horo­scope.  Thank­fully there are a zil­lion toys out there right now you can choose from for your dog’s chew­ing plea­sure.  Some are safer than oth­ers, how­ever there is no such thing as a 100% “safe toy! I can not stress that enough.  Espe­cially when you’re talk­ing about pup­pies chew­ing.  Those won­der­ful lit­tle mon­sters will chew any­thing and every­thing to try and pacify painful teething, explore the world, and get energy out.

My favorite are inter­ac­tive toys like the Buster Cube, the Kib­ble Nib­ble, or the Kong.  But that’s just because I am a behav­ior dork and like toys that require some brain power.  My per­sonal opin­ion is the Buster Cube is the tough­est, while the Kib­ble Nib­ble is the eas­i­est to clean.  And if you don’t know what a Kong is, you need to buy one right now.  The Kong is one of the best toys out there.  There are “Kong stuff­ing recipes,” but you can use your imag­i­na­tion.  Just use com­mon sense too.  Don’t fill it with choco­late cov­ered raisins, or any­thing else “dog­gie toxic.”  My dog’s favorite is to put the left­over mac-n-cheese in his Kong and throw it in a bag in the freezer.  The other thing I love about the Kong toy (and no, I’m not get­ting paid for this blog post from Kong), is you can throw them into the dish­washer!  Presto!  Cleano!  How­ever, I do still give my dog credit for the pre-wash, because he’ll work on it until it’s empty.

Regard­less of what toy you want your dog to play with, remem­ber that the dog’s opin­ion counts too.  Just because the toy is $20 at the fancy hoity-toity store doesn’t mean the dog will like that over your empty bot­tled water bot­tle.  Just make sure he doesn’t eat the shiny new empty plas­tic bot­tled water bottle.

One more trick I will leave you with is to rotate toys.  Usu­ally peo­ple keep 1/3 on the ground, and 2/3 hid­den away.  Each week just rotate them.  It’s funny how toys seem new, fun, and excit­ing this way.