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Toys are a real problem in my house. Once we have children we’ll have to be careful about what toys are left lying around. At the moment we can’t have many toys for either the cats or the dog, and Chihiro has no one but herself to blame.
Chihiro has one goal with every toy she finds: to consume it. When we first got her she came with a stuffed pink octopus toy. That lasted just a few weeks before she began tearing off pieces to eat. I got her another stuffed toy and a rope toy to replace her octopus, but the ultimate result was soon the same.
Then I switched to hard rubber and plastic toys, ones of which she presumably couldn’t tear off pieces. Chihiro chews them diligently and everything seems fine. But after months (which at least is better than weeks), she eventually wears these toys down enough that pieces start falling off that she can swallow.
The only dubious silver lining to this whole thing is that at least I don’t have to take my dog to the vet to remove all of these offending bits of toys from her stomach. No, Chihiro does that for herself, usually just hours after eating her toys. But I’m not exactly a fan of cleaning up her puke, so once her toys show the fatal amount of wear I throw them out.
I don’t buy toys for my dog anymore, just rawhides. At least she’s meant to eat those. I do have to take them away from her from time to time. It’s not good for her to eat a whole one in a single setting, which she would do if I let her.
The reason the cats can’t have many toys is that Chihiro eats most of them, too. She’s strange about it; I might buy them a new mouse toy and she’ll ignore it for months, but then one day for whatever reason she decides to eat it. The cats can’t have many toys either, because they will inevitably end up in my dog’s gullet.
I’m already having to screen what toys I give my dog, but it turns out most dog owners, even ones whose canines don’t want to completely consume all of their toys, might start having to do the same. ABC News reports that more and more pet owners are having similar problems with their toys.
Some of these owners want to blame the packaging – it’ll say to supervise the pet when playing with the toy, but it doesn’t always have a warning about swallowing. To that I say: well, what did you expect? Did you really need a label to tell you that dogs like to put things in their mouths and might swallow them?
Perhaps it’s because my dog’s ultimate goal with everything is to eat it, a trait I’ve since learned during dog park visits isn’t something all dogs share (she tries to eat sticks and pinecones while outside), but I feel it’s like with small children: if the item is small enough to be swallowed, assume it might be swallowed. If the item might be toxic, assume it might be toxic and make sure your dog doesn’t eat it.
I follow the same rule one would with a toddler: don’t leave anything lying around or give your dog anything that it could possibly consume, even if the item isn’t toxic. If your dog starts to tear a toy to pieces and eats those pieces, take the toy away and don’t buy others like it.
That’s why I’m a fan of rawhides and laser pointers: my dog is crazy for both of these toys, and I don’t have to worry about her hurting herself when playing with them.
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*(This image by RyanCarr is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
