Aug 28, 2020 3 min read

Wednesday was a bad day for shoes around here. Wednesday was also National Dog Day, so maybe Waylon the collie thought he deserved a treat.

While the world was celebrating the wonder of dogs, our puppy went into my closet and pulled out a left loafer and a left flip flop, carried them off and chewed them. To discover the loafer, I followed a trail of rubber crumbs from the bedroom to the kitchen. I didn’t know he had gotten hold of the flip flop until my foot slid into the crater he’d chewed in the sole – the slobbery crater.

We knew puppies chew, but this much?

In only nine months with us, he has shredded the leg of a wooden table, gnawed one of his pet beds to shreds and, as lamented in this column recently, chewed several holes in our walls.

“He’s coming for the refrigerator next,” I told the farmer. “Or your truck.”

And so off I went to buy something meant to be chewed, a search that would be difficult because of all the things we have to exclude.

Early in his puppyhood, we bought actual beef soup bones: one for Waylon and one for the older, grumpy, original dog, Smoothie. But then Smoothie got very sick – with pancreatitis – and now he can have no fat. We cook him batches of white rice and chicken breast, and that’s all he can eat.

Rawhide is a no no.

Now, all my life we’d had dogs who enjoyed rawhide bones, including one little mutt who lived into her 20s, but it turns out the chewed bits can cause choking.

“Try bully sticks,” said the co-worker who has his own big, chewy dog. Bully sticks are, um, the dried private parts of a bull, and they’re not cheap. I nabbed a few at the healthy pet store, brought them home and found they are not so much chewy as munchable. Waylon had torn apart and consumed the whole thing in 20 minutes.

Twelve dollars worth.

“Antlers,” said the co-worker, and sure enough, the healthy pet store had them, sawed-off chunks of deer racks – entire hanging racks of them. The one I had in my hand was $35. I put it back.

Finally, I arrived at a possible solution: a synthetic, bone-shaped length of some plastic-like material that was infused with the taste of chicken. When I carried the bag into the house, the dogs followed me.

I think they knew.

One for Waylon and one for Smoothie. Way carried his into his crate. Smoothie took his and hid in the office. For a few sweet moments, the house was quiet but for the crunchy sound of teeth gnawing on plastic. And then, the reckoning.

Waylon dropped his bone and went for Smoothie’s, which was identical. Fussing and barking ensued, as each dog first coveted and then tried to pilfer the other’s toy. Finally, unable to talk sense into the two knuckleheads, I collected the bones and put them away. I’ll try again another day.

In the meantime, I’m shutting the closet doors, to keep Waylon out of my shoes. Had he eaten one left and one right shoe, at least I’d have a mismatched pair I could shuffle around the house in. But no. This chewing habit of his cost me about $80 in footwear.

The antlers would have been cheaper.