Dog toys are an important part of our household. We have to have the right kinds for our two dogs and the right number for optimum sharing.

That has become a problem since we got an eight month old rescue dog, Remy, five months ago. She joined our seven-year old dog, Lexi.

Lexi is very gentle with dog toys, so they tend to last a long time. She still has ‘Blue Dog’, the stuffed animal we bought the day we brought her home with us seven years ago. (Actually, the current “Blue Dog’ is the second of two identical dogs we bought for Lexi.

Every morning, Lexi used to religiously bring Blue Dog down from the bedroom to the kitchen/family room. Every night, she would also carry him back upstairs when we went up to bed. We loved this ritual. But she can’t do it anymore. Remy got hold of one of the Blue Dogs, which I had lovingly sewn back together and patched up many, many times. It was missing it’s tail, ears and three of its legs.

After Remy was through with it, the remains had to be thrown in the garbage. We had to take the other Blue dog away from Lexi to protect him from a similar fate. Lexi has adjusted. We are still broken-hearted.

Remy is an eviscerater. She takes any fabric toy, tears it open, pulls out the stuffing, then shreds it. The floor looks like a bomb went off in a cotton ball factory. She has been known to turn stuffed toys inside out in the process. She is the Terminator of Stuffed Toys. And she does this in record time – hours, not days. So poor Lexi can’t have her plush toys anymore. We buy her the flat ones that look like stuffed animals but have no stuffing. They don’t last very long either, but it’s better than nothing.

My husband Tom has also had to change some of his habits since Remy joined our family. Lexi intuitively knew what was a dog toy and what was not. She never, ever chewed anything that wasn’t made for dogs. What she did do was ‘clean up’ after Tom. When Tom left his socks on the floor in the bedroom, Lexi would bring them down to the family room. She never chewed them. She just removed them from the bedroom. I think she was reminding Tom that he had forgotten to put his socks in the hamper.

Lexi with toys and sock in her mouth

Unfortunately, Remy does not have Lexi’s dog toy “radar.” To Remy, anything on the floor is fair game. So Tom’s socks don’t make it to the family room. When they land on the bedroom floor, they get scooped up by Remy and shredded. Not only does Tom now have to put his socks in the hamper every day, he has to bury them in amongst the dirty clothes. Otherwise, Remy will walk into the closet and pick the socks off the top of the clothes pile.

She has apparently developed a taste for socks. Tom’s socks.

So I’m buying a lot more dog toys and men’s socks these days. Maybe Remy will outgrow some of her super aggressive chewing as she gets older. But by then, I’ll have gotten used to shopping for extra toys and socks so I probably won’t even care anymore. Remy is worth the extra effort. And watching Remy and Lexi wrestle and chase each other outside makes all the carnage is worthwhile.

Categories: #animals, dogs, Humor, Pets

Tags: dog toys, dogs, Ellin Curley, humor, pets