Over the years I have brought home various stuffed animals for Leah, which we keep on a cedar chest in our bedroom.
Sam likes to chew on things.
I think you can see where this is going.
We have left Sam in the house many times since he came to live with us, and he has caused only minimal damage. He has chewed up several socks and a couple of Leah’s bedroom slippers, usually early in the morning when he gets up before us. He tore up a stuffed hedgehog dog toy, and he chewed on a little stuffed gorilla. No big deal. Then on Wednesday when we went for our weekly huevos ranchers lunch, he chewed up the face of the Valentine’s Day doberman I gave Leah, as well as Minnie Mouse’s foot and ear.
There’s not much we can do about it other than try to remember to keep chew-attractive items out of his reach.
This is probably a foolish question, but have you bought him things he is allowed to chew? I had a bulldog once that chewed on pretty much anything; once I got into the habit of buying her a giant rawhide bone and making sure that there were always two of those around, she stopped chewing on other stuff and chewed the bones into non-existence.
Ridger — It’s certainly not a foolish question. He has had access to some things that he can chew, but not all the time. We give all the dogs rawhide chews, but ever since our experience with our last Doberman I have been hesitant to let them chew without supervision. Zeus, the Dobie, would chew a pencil-sized rawhide for a while and then decide to swallow it. It almost always ended up stuck in his throat and I would have to stick my hand down to pull it back out. It was like reaching into the throat of an alligator. We are going to try a larger rawhide next time, but we’ll have to keep the dogs out of our bedroom, which has carpet. They made a mess when they chew rawhide on carpet. He may chew these up too quickly, so we might end up with an even larger rawhide.