Gnaw Place Like Home
By Terry Doe
Morris chomps indiscriminately, and since his diet includes furniture and gates, he is literally eating Terry out of house and home. When your dog has been designed from the jaws down, I guess it's fair to expect him to use them occasionally. Like all Bull Terriers, my Morris is anything but dentally challenged: in fact when doggie-toy manufacturers print "virtually indestructible" on their chewy things, what they really mean is "totally indestructible" - unless that bloody Morris latches onto it!
My dog's lamentably short CV only includes being famously stupid, breaking wind like a dyspeptic water buffalo and having a car crusher where his mouth should be. Of these, the latter has been causing some concern of late. You see, when the most energetic member of your household is limited to the three talents already mentioned, life gets a tad fraught if he ever feels the need to express annoyance.
Truth to tell, Morris rarely gets involved in protests of any sort. Provided he gets his meager daily minimum of several pounds of designer food, at least one ox thigh to chomp on, a sheaf of new bedding to replace the load he's just reduced to confetti, and a route march that would be rejected by the SAS as being beyond the limits of human endurance, Morris hardly moans at all.
Inevitably in this life, such an easy truce can't possibly last - Morris and me are at loggerheads over something he wants to do which I won't allow. It's not me at all, really it's HERSELF. She refuses flat out to allow Morris to flop all over the soft furnishings and because he's my dog whenever he is out of order, I have to sort him out. Here is what hasn't worked so far:
1. Holking Morris off the couch and ordering him out of the room in my most assertive voice, while wagging my most assertive finger.
RESULT: He farts a couple of times and does his "Okay, if you won't let me do what I want, I'm going to run madly around the house until I knock something over" routine.
2. Sneaking up on him as he sprawls on his back in HERSELF'S reclining chair, muscly legs akimbo, snoring like a pig (which has been said is a fair imitation of that particular chair's rightful occupant) then walloping the arm of the chair with a rolled up newspaper.
RESULT: A gigantic fear-fart, followed by 20 minutes of continual barking to cover Morris's embarrassment.
3. Discouraging access to sofa and chairs by placing uncomfortable objects on them-knobbly books, mountain bike, gas cooker and so on.
RESULT: Morris doesn't fart this time. Instead, he pulls all discouraging objects off the furniture and throws them around a bit before climbing aboard. Then he farts.
4. Each time Morris is captured akip on the couch, I make him do half an hour solitary outside in his kennel. Morris's kennel looks like the house Heidi grew up in, has a fitted carpet and is filled with toys, so as a means of severe punishment, it isn't really up to much.
RESULT: He sulks. Morris sulks by chewing the hell out of anything that will yield a ton of jaw pressure. I've discovered that most things will yield to this. To date, Maching gums Morris has mangled one and a half expensive chair legs, his bed, gate, the porch, our stair carpet, other portions of chair, some garden hose attachments and sufficient footwear to fill a brace of wheely bins. The ferocious efficiency of my dog's molars has to be seen to be believed-and even then most people don't believe it.
Okay so my tactics to date have been less than successful. And before you write in and suggestions about smearing every chewable item with the patented Anti-Munch Unction that deterred your wee Benji when he was a pup, be assured that I've probably tried them all. When neat Tabasco sauce is regarded as mere gate-garnish, and the slavering hound chews on regardless, you know you are dealing with no ordinary dog.
I remain hopeful, and would try any sure fire cures the learned readership cares to suggest, but right now I'm as good as preventing Morris's oral demolition of our world as I am keeping his high visibility, Draglon magnetic white hairs off the furniture. Naturally, the entire situation is my fault and I've been sentenced to an undefined period of strategic nagging as if I needed another demonstration of mouth power. So here I am, caught in a withering two-gob cross-fire between my partner and my pet. The way things are going, the only white hairs to be shed around this place are going to belong to me.
