Dog Tire-d

I apologize for the messed-up spacing in this post. I think it must have something to do with the photos. Just know that I do have white space between paragraphs, but I can't get it to show here. - C

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Puppies chew. It's a given. It soothes them much like a massage or a good stiff drink soothes us mere humans.

Shiner is nine months, but still a puppy until he's a year. After puppyhood, dogs usually lose the need to chew as much as they did when they were puppies. In the past this has been true for all our dogs. But we've never had a world-class chewer before. Shiner is world-class.

Back in June, we bought him a Paw Prints Tirebiter. It's made from thick rubber exactly like a miniature tire. It's 8" in diameter. From the marketing photo, you can see what it looked like, including the paw-print treads and how wide the tread part of the tire is.

This is what it looks like today. The tiles are 12" tiles.

I think Shiner's next goal is to eat the words off the piece on the right because he's eaten through the rubber at that point.

Now, while he's had a grand time with this toy, put yourself in my place. I walk into a room where he's playing with it - and this is usually the family room - and there are tiny rubber pieces on the rug, the floor, the ottoman. Day after day.

He likes to mess with me, and one day he left me a piece in the laundry room.

Yesterday, he and Wrangler were playing. I could hear them from my desk and knew all was OK by the tones of their yips and grrs.

Usually they play five minutes or so before one tires or one gets angry. But yesterday, they'd been playing about twice as long as usual and were still going at it.

I got up to see what was so good. Here's what they were playing with:

This is a tiny piece of the tire.

One would pick it up, run it by the other's nose, and drop it. The other would pick it up and do the same. They'd do this a few times, then they'd play tug-of-war with this little bit of rubber.

Nose to nose.

Then the game started again. They played for almost twenty minutes.

Go figure.