When Leah and I go somewhere without Zoe, if we happen to leave our slippers at the door, we can count on having a missing slipper when we get back home. When we look around, we usually find the slipper on Zoe and Sam’s bed, back in our bedroom. Sometimes it ends up in the room we use for an office, where Zoe sometimes goes to sulk. We have concluded that Zoe gets something of ours to comfort herself while we’re away. The slipper is never chewed.

If we put our slippers in the closet next to the back door, Zoe sometimes goes into our closet and takes a dirty sock or something else out. It ends up where the slipper would have been. It’s comical and kind of touching.

I have also been leaving two pairs of leather gloves next to the wood-burning stove in our living room. We came home one day and one glove was missing. Of course we thought Zoe had taken it back to her bed, but it wasn’t there. I looked everywhere I thought there was even a slight chance it could be. I looked in our bedroom, our closet, the bathrooms, the office, the spare bedroom, under the couch — no luck. I eventually gave up and figured I would find it some day, somewhere.

So I ended up with three gloves by the stove. No problem; I only have two hands.

And then one day when we came back home, I found this on the dog bed that’s in front of our couch.

Sam was chewing on it. Sam, unlike Zoe, is destructive when he picks out an object with sentimental value. His chewing seems to be normal doggie obsessive. He chews on his bed sometimes. He has ruined a couple that way. He has chewed on the bottom of the curtains next to their bed in our bedroom. He chews the tails off the cat’s little mousie toys. And, apparently, he chews the palms off of leather gloves.

I looked around for the chewed pieces of the glove, but never found them. I have to assume he swallowed them. And, I think that means he chewed the original missing glove and swallowed the whole thing.

So far he hasn’t shown any signs of digestive problems. I haven’t been inspecting his scat carefully, but it must have passed by now.

So now I keep my gloves on a table.