New Puppy is a Chewing Machine

  Everyone loves a puppy, but they tend to come with some bad habits –  crying, excessive barking, jumping up on people …

  The new puppy at the Woodwards’ house doesn’t have any of those habits, but she does have one that’s truly annoying, to say nothing of expensive.

  She reminds me of something a friend of mine did in high school to try to get out of writing an essay for English class. When it was time to read his essay to the class, he stood and announced that his essay was about his dog. This was a bit unexpected, as he didn’t have a dog.

  “My dog chews everything,” he read. “He chews bones, sticks, slippers. He chews …”

  At this point he held up the “essay” he was reading to show that most of it had been chewed to oblivion. The students thought it was hilarious. Our elderly, no-nonsense teacher, Miss Woesner, did not see the humor. She gave him a withering look, and an F on his assignment.

  He could have been writing about Jojo, the aforementioned puppy. Jojo is a good dog. She’s smart, affectionate and gets along well with both people and other dogs. But she chews everything. She’s a chewing machine. We’ve had a lot of dogs over the years, and none has come close to her when it comes to chewing everything she can get her paws on.

  It’s not as if we haven’t given her things that are okay for her to chew. We’ve bought her chew toys made of rubber or nylon. She chews on them constantly.

  Until she finds something more interesting to chew.

  My reading glasses, for example. Left where she can get them – and few places seem to be beyond her reach – she has the arms of my glasses looking like pipe cleaners in seconds.

  At least she doesn’t discriminate, though. She chews on my wife’s reading glasses, too.

  One of my favorite things in our back yard is an ornamental grass plant. It’s several feet tall, with green stalks culminating in feathery plumes. It was, that is, until Jojo discovered it. Now it looks like 

Guy Fieri on a bad hair day.

  She almost chewed up the latest Idaho Public Television Channels guide. If I hadn’t gotten it away from her in the nick of time, it would have looked like confetti.

  We find confetti in virtually every room. She chews tissues, newspapers, paper napkins, book markers, the instructions that come with medical prescriptions, the box for an expensive Christmas ornament, a package of Lik-M-Aid left in a bedroom by our nine-year-old grandson. This had the added benefit of staining part of a white bedspread blue.

  While I was writing this, she snuck behind a lounge chair, found a  charger the grandson had left for his favorite game and in less time than it took to yell “Jojo, don’t even think about it,” she’d chewed its cord in half.

  We worry that she’ll chew her way into a lamp cord or appliance cord and get a nasty shock. Not that that would stop her from chewing. A 7.0 earthquake wouldn’t stop her from chewing. 

  She chewed the plastic lid on a jar to the point that it was all but unrecognizable as a lid. Actually, I rather like it. It looks like abstract art. Picasso would have loved it. 

  She chewed up a ballpoint pen. How she avoided getting ink on herself, or, worse, the carpet, is a mystery. 

  She pulverized a set of toy wooden blocks. How she finds some of the things she chews is another mystery. We hadn’t seen those blocks in years. How or where she got them is anyone’s guess, but she’s spooky smart. The only thing that comes to mind, improbable though it may be, is that she found a way to pull down the attic ladder, climb up and help herself to the contents of an old toy box.

  We have to be careful not to leave things within her reach that could splinter when chewed and injure her if she swallowed the splinters. Popsicle sticks, one of her favorite victims, could be deadly.

   Our older daughter, who owns Jojo but has us dog-sit her while she’s working 12- and 24-hour shifts on her job, bought her a supposedly safe deer-antler chew. She loves it.

  But not as much as she loves paper, cardboard, pens and pencils, the television remote …

  Why, you may be asking, have we failed to keep those things out of her reach. We’ve tried, and to an extent succeeded. But she finds things in the least likely places. She crawls behind lounge chairs, squeezes into the cramped spaces behind couches, and comes up with things we forgot we ever had.

  Things you’d think would be out of her reach aren’t. Her jumping ability is extraordinary for a small dog. She’s the Michael Jordan of canines. She once jumped from a standing start over the back of a couch and landed on the other side, where our astonished daughter was napping and almost came out of her skin. 

  A few days ago, the mail brought a pitch for a publication called Whole Dog Journal. Its purported benefits include, among other things, “five easy ways to prevent your dog from chewing.”

  Our check’s in the mail.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.