The doggie toy stores have lots of toys that are marked something like “almost indestructible.” We’ve bought some made out of “fire hose,” for example, that are supposed to be impervious to a dog’s chewing. Well, maybe not the little sales tags, but at least the fire hose part.

We also bought a very sturdy, plastic pan full of squeakers, which Callie thought was really great. It was sort of like a muffin pan, where every muffin made a “squeak” sound. Terrific.

Only problem is, Callie destroys this stuff in minutes, if not seconds. With the fire hose toys, she’s learned to go to work on the tags and the stitching first. Once she’s made a dent there, the rest is a piece of cake. The last one lasted about ten minutes.

So here’s the mystery. Callie still has her “stinky,” a soft little stuffed puppy toy that belonged to Jamie. It’s Callie’s “stinky,” (so named by Granddaughter Lauren) or security object. She keeps it close and nibbles on it as a way of relaxing. And guess what? It’s survived two dogs (Jamie and Callie) and about five years.

This isn’t the only “soft survivor.” Callie has a handful of other soft toys that she could probably destroy, but she hasn’t. What’s going on here? Do the “indestructible” toys create a doggie challenge? Is there something about the soft toys that says, in doggie talk, “please do not destroy me?” Is Callie’s stinky so much like another little puppy that she’s more gentle with it? I wish I understood what’s going on here.

I think, in the future, we’ll lean more toward the soft stuffed, cuddly toys, even though, theoretically, they are easier to destroy. Callie seems less inclined to do them in.

We have found a few very hard, “indestructible for all practical purposes” toys. Namely the “Kong” toys, which are made of hard rubber or something like that. It might be possible for a dog to chew a little bite out of the material, but so far Callie hasn’t been able to. Also, we have a very hard bone that Callie chews for hours. It’s made out of some kind of durable material. I don’t think it’s plastic, but it’s something in that direction. Callie can put little scrapes and blemishes in it, but so far she hasn’t been able to take a real bite out of it.

So the mystery continues. For the time being, I’m going to assume, with the two assumptions mentioned in the previous paragraph, that there is no such thing as an “indestructible” puppy toy. I’m also going to assume that there’s something special about the softer toys that makes Callie not want to destroy them in minutes or seconds.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Callie, Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.