The Never Ending Battle: Chewing.

Being the owner of two puppies at this moment, I think I’m about ready to give up and let the dogs chew on anything. Seraphim is going through her second or third teething stage, and Butter is fully into her ‘terrible twos’ as we call it. Chewing in our house is a constant battle. Our rodent always has to chew its in his nature, so he has several wooden blocks, pumice stones, and a bunch of other toys to maintain his healthy smile. Our dogs have toys of all assortments to encourage teething on them.

I’ve, however, discovered a most disturbing thing, toys that are meant for ‘big dogs’ such as my two pups, are well…Not so indestructible, they’ve taken tennis balls and shredded them, rope balls fair just the same, the tug-o-rope rope looks like its been electrocuted, and the plush squeaky shoe is no more than remnants of fluff. Even bones are no match for my terrifying duo.

So here, I challenge the producers of dog toys. Please, please make something more durable, I understand that you want to make stupid amounts of money on toys, but honestly my front door is looking more shabby every day. Its challenging as an owner, to discover one of my dog’s most beloved toys is also Styrofoam covered with cloth, and have to pry the little poisonous pieces from my dog’s unwilling mouth.

Yes, we buy raw-hide bones for our dogs, I monitor their chewing behaviors with them, but in a whole we attempt to buy the best toys for the dogs to promote their normal behaviors. I find that rope toys are great, you can get them in ball shapes, tug ropes, with a tennis ball on it. Frisbees are great too, but both my girls play “chase me mom!” rather than actual fetch.

So what’s an owner to do, its a never ending battle, big dogs like to chew they get bored they chew, they get stressed they chew they just like to chew. How does an owner overcome the dealings of chew toys and the fact that most manufacturers don’t care what they put into our dog toys, or even what they sell as animal safe toys.

We as owners need to step up, and start demanding better for our pets to ensure in the end their play is safe and fun. Just because their ‘animals’ doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve this. Some people don’t have children, they have pets. They don’t want to lose their pet to some chemical, Styrofoam, or anything else toy related for that matter.

So I challenge you, the owner of your dog, think about what you buy it. Not only that, but if you’re a pet store owner, if you can some how affect the shipments, find better safer alternatives for the owners of today’s dogs. These are creatures that love us completely, and utterly that are so loyal to us. The least we can do is make sure they’re safe.

With that being said, I’m off to save my shoe from Butter before she makes it into a sandal