My stupid dog.

Today's BEDA topic is Sports. I'll write a Sports-related post eventually, but first I thought I would grumble a bit about Tia.

Tia is an Eater. Some dogs chew things up and leave bits everywhere, but Tia for the most part ingests all the little bits. This makes buying toys a challenge. She won't sit and chew on a Kong if there's no food in it, because she can't destroy it. Tjett found this blue rubbery chew toy that claims to be good even for power chewers.

Bullshit.

Oh, she loves it all right...but every time she chewed through one of the nubs, I would take it away and cut that part off. Seemed to be working just fine...until she managed to chew off a little bit from one of the butchered ends. I felt kinda bad, because I basically jammed my fingers down her throat (I was just trying to get it out of her mouth) and got it out. But upon further inspection, it looks like she had gotten another, albeit slightly smaller, piece out without my knowledge. Usually when this kind of thing happens, we give her some peroxide and she throws it up. But we decided that it was small enough that it should either pass, or she'll throw it up on her own (which she tends to do when we don't know that she's eaten anything).

This is all well and good on paper, but naturally, I'm super worried about her. Also, the last 4 nights in a row, she's woken me up to go outside at 3:30 in the morning, so I hardly slept last night because I was a) worried she was going to throw up, and b) trying to telepathically tell her to go back to sleep because I did not want to get up to let her out.

She still has not thrown up. So I'm still a bit worried.

Lately, we have been letting her loose in the house, unsupervised, for short periods of time. It had been awhile since she ate anything (that we knew about) while she wasn't being watched, either at night or while I am in the shower in the morning and Tjett's gone to work. This morning, she had a 1.5 mile run with me, a game of fetch in the backyard, and some good healthy runs around the yard like a crazy dog. She seemed a bit tuckered out and subdued, so I let her hang out while I was in the shower. Other times I do this, I find her either on the floor, the couch, or the bed, just sleeping.

Not today! No, today she came running out of the bedroom when I got out of the shower. I went into the bedroom, and she had basically shredded her bed. I didn't have time to take a picture. So yes, I'm thankful that it was HER bed and not OUR bed or the couch...but still. There were little foamy bits everywhere, and who knows how many she ate. I told her off a bit (not too much, because unlike children, you can't really punish a dog for something that they're not in the act of doing) and she just grinned at me and wagged her tail.

Stupid dog. So now I am going back to shutting her in the hallway when I can't supervise her. And only Kongs and Nylabones. She can just deal with it.