2026, home, pets, Uncategorized

The Big Chews

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Our puppy is 5 months old and at the peak of teething. I am happy to report that she isn’t a chewer of furniture, although like most terriers she loves to steal socks and tries to haul off shoes that get left out.

We get her collagen chewing sticks of various lengths. She loves to gnaw on those. Rawhide is now deemed very unhealthy for dogs. She also loves to chew on her brother when they wrestle and chase. He reciprocates by stealing her favorite collagen chew whenever he can. Here she is with her longest chew. There are chews of various lengths all over the house.

Mitzi may not chew on furniture, but she has set herself a bigger goal of devouring our deck floor. We have a very large deck. It is perfect for the dogs to run and chase and tumble and wrestle

It even extends beyond the vertical boards you see, which is where the previous homeowners had their hot tub.

We knew the deck floor wasn’t in the best shape when we bought the house, and we plan to replace it one of these years with some indestructible modern composite like Trex. Mitzi decided about a month or so ago to speed up the replacement process by finding vulnerable sections in the flooring and chewing them up.

We didn’t catch on to what she was doing right away. After we realized what was happening we bought some inexpensive welcome mats to put on the vulnerable floor sections and we watch her very carefully when she is outside. The Vet and her breeder assure us that she will be over the Big Chews in a couple of weeks.

Any stories of destruction by your pets? When have you bitten off more than you could chew?

33 thoughts on “The Big Chews”

  1. i have chosen dogs with a mellow factor as a major part of the equation. nala is the furthest from mellow ive had and shes just twitchy. my bassets were annoying in an endearing way but never destructive. terriers are made to be just what you describe. they were made for you not me. i dont even like watching

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  3. Bailey chewed on things for a while: The front bumper of Kelly’s car, the edge of the deck.
    And we had a couple geese that were terrible evil things. They chewed the engine heater plug off my car, they chewed through the wire for the igniter on the grill. I hated those geese and they hated us.

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  4. The Birds are working on a wooden picture frame. They’ve a long ways to go.
    OT
    It is Bugs Bunny Day marking the appearance of the rabbit in 1938.
    What’s Opera, Doc? is released in 1957.

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  5. Maggie has gone through some phases. There was a phase during which she found edges of the carpeting and pulled on them, eating the carpet fibers. The worst of these is on the carpeted threshold for the patio door. Before I realized what she was doing, she chewed a big hole in the carpeting near the door track. I still catch her pulling carpet fibers out of that area, but not often. She has had some good chew toys but I need to find something better. She’s never had rawhide, but she did have some toys that were suede leather with dense wool felt inside them. These were stitched with heavy cotton yarn. I had to take them away when she started pulling out the cotton yarn stitching and trying to eat it. She has a rubbery chewy worm and a hard nylabone now. Where do you buy the collagen chews? I think I saw them somewhere but I wanted to learn more about them before I bought them.

    Maggie loves to steal my clothes too. She has stolen t-shirts, socks, and undergarments. She chewed up one of my bras before I knew she had it. Good thing I don’t spend a lot of money on undergarments!

    Re: yesterday’s yodeling discussion. I posted a video of my friend Riff singing at an old-time music festival in LeMars, IA in 2010. He was the bass player in the band I played in. He’s a versatile musician with a few interesting personas – not the kind of person you meet every day. Anyway, I also get a video from him for my birthday every year. https://youtu.be/5lioft44OPU?feature=shared

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  6. I attempted to re-carpet a Lane Bryant store in Cherry Hills, New Jersey by myself.
    The first night, I tore out and installed 2 12foot drops out of 14. The store manager was po’d. The install took one hour but the demolition was brutal plus removing and replacing the displays. Got “help” from a labor ready firm. Did 4 more drops. My hands and body were wrecked. 4 more the next night. A crew came down from Maine to finish up as I was scheduled to be in Napa, California that day. A horrible two weeks!

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  7. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I have had several dogs that were chewers/destroyers. An Irish Setter who was crazy hyperactive, destroyed my house as a puppy. She was bored, I think. I arrived home from work one day to a couch pillow that appeared to have exploded all over the living room; a total newspaper (at that time The Des Moines Register) also exploded. She chewed on a rocking chair and somehow managed to rip off the upholstry. I was at the time, a very young, naive dog owner without enough knowledge to keep her entertained during the day. Now I would care for a dog like her very differently.

    Lucky, our more recent dog who many of you would have met, was also hyperactive, needing to chew excessively until she was 18 months old. She went through a 12″ chew stick daily until that time. Then she started licking. First it was her paws, until one paw was red and swollen. Next it was my wagon box from 1807. Lucky developed a huge blister on her nose. I had not yet realized she was licking the box, so I was madly searching for the source of dog nose blisters, even checking into herpes in dogs. Then one day I found her licking the box. She left a 2″ patch on it that she licked obsessively. I wrapped the entire thing in plastic wrap so she could not do that. The wrap stayed there for the next 7 years until she died of bladder cancer. I found her to be a highly anxious dog with no, No, NO impulse control (reactive). She loved to bring me dead baby rabbits from the yard.

    I think I bit off more than I could chew just by being born. Sometimes life is just a lot! But then there was that first marriage, the ceramic tile project that did not work out, the weeds in my garden every doggone year, and now my little studio needs cleaning after I made a real mess on a project.

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  8. This move is close to a bite or two more than I can chew, especially with my new disease. However, I am close enough to the end that I can rest a lot. This morning all I did was get all my tech connected and chatting with each other about where the hell they are now.
    Clyde

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        1. Realistically, Clyde, anyone in the over 80 group is nearing the end of their life. I just turned 83 on Monday, and I’m not taking it for granted that I’ll see another birthday. Live each day as if it’s your last because it just may be.

          We had Martha, our fifteen year old cat, euthanized this morning. She had been struggling with a hyper- thyroid for the better part of a year. We could not ease her suffering. The vet came to our house, and Martha died peacefully in my lap.

          She was a muted tortie, a real little spitfire. She tolerated being held, but only for a few seconds; she was never a cuddly cat, but had tons of personality, and I loved her dearly. Holding her while she slipped away was the longest she ever tolerated being held. Now she’s at peace, and I’m sad, but also relieved.

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        6. Probably not, Barb. Most of her life, Martha would make herself scarce whenever strangers would come into the house. It was only during the last five or six years that she gradually figured out that most of our visitors meant her no harm. She would even let a few people pet her, but she didn’t like anyone picking her up. Any touching had to be strictly on her terms.

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        1. Thanks for caring, Jacque. The last couple of weeks were really hard, but I finally decided to put her out of her misery.

          I had dreaded today’s appointment, and hardly slept last night, but it was far less traumatic than I had anticipated because of a sensitive and caring vet.

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  10. Being a Board Pres. sometimes feels like I’ve bit off more than I should, like right now when our Annual (business) Meeting is this Sunday, in place of a regular UU service.
    But then other volunteers then show up to prove that I’m wrong. May it continue…

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  11. The first dog I had as a young adult was Katy Scarlett – she was my heart dog. While she didn’t have any destructive habits, she did have a wild streak that was completely unpredictable. When she was four, she got into a laundry basket that was holding 24 Ukrainian eggs, each wrapped individually in little white boxes. She brought them all down the stairs into the living room, disemboweled the boxes and ate the egg ornaments. 23 out of 24. Then, before I even got home, she threw it all up. And because these eggs had the little metal findings on them, I had to paw through the throw-up to make sure all 23 were accounted for. She had never paid any attention to the Ukrainian eggs before and she never paid any attention to them afterwards. Wild hair.

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  12. On the second day of tim and I sand-blasting my front porch, I thought I might as well discover religion because we had certainly discovered he**. I still can’t believe we not only finished that project, but survived it!

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  13. My scaredy-cat Jory used to retreat to an upstairs closet when something startled him. Usually it was the doorbell. He would race up the stairs, paw open the closet door, and make a leap for an upper shelf. The process of getting from the shoe rack to that upper shelf took an unfortunate toll on the sleeves of the clothes hanging on the closet rod. I have lots of little snags and ragged spots on some sweaters and jackets. After a while I learned to shut the closet door more firmly and Jory had to find new hiding places.

    Here’s a little something in memory of Martha. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Mse62NFl4

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    1. Thanks, Linda. For whatever reason that song released the waterworks I’ve been holding back all day. I needed to let it go; I’ll have no trouble sleeping tonight.

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