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Why does my dog keep chewing on her dog bed?

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There’s only one problem with having a dog that loves to chew … when she’s bored she starts to chew on her pet beds! What a pain … I’m trying to give my dog a comfortable place to rest and she repays me by chewing holes in her dog bed!

It’s not as bad now as it was when she was a little puppy. She chewed on everything she could back then. I swear it was worse than watching a toddler. Luckily she only chewed a few things (other than her bed) that she shouldn’t have – including the bottom of our upstairs staircase, the coffee table leg and the hood of my coat!

she has one smallish pet bed in her crate – she’s a Lab and she just fits in it if she curls up. Recently she’s started to chew on the pillow again. We also have a HUGE pet bed that sits on the living room floor and it’s made with a very thick canvas material. She’s chewed the center pillow in that a few times – I have a feeling that some of the chewing on that one was accidental when she was chewing one of her bones or her rawhide … but still, the holes look horrible!

I’ve hand sewn and patched her small pet bed a few times and that’s helped but it doesn’t
t make the pet bed look much better.

Midnight is about 19 months old now. She’s calmed down a lot in the last few months, but other Lab owners keep telling us that they don’t really start to calm down until they are about three. Some have also said the destructive chewing slows down around that time too, although others have older dogs that still chew a lot.

I guess we just have to keep her as active as possible so that she’s not bored and too tired to chew her bed.

Do any other dog owners have this problem?

BTW if anyone knows what to do about a possible mouse or other wild animal that seems to be in one of our walls please comment on the post I made on Tricia’s Musings. I’m getting freaked out by the weird sounds in the wall!





When kittens attack …

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Wordless Wednesday

These kittens must be really really really hungry!

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Look .. there’s five of them crawling up that woman’s leg, she must be preparing to feed them. Yep … kittens will attack when hungry, be careful!  At least the adult cat, probably the mom, is waiting patiently.

My dog is hooked on Rawhide

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My Lab Midnight loves to get treats.

We sometimes give her a tiny portion of our dinner – healthy things like small plain piece of boneless skinless chicken breast, raw carrots, green beans or other veggies- cooked or raw.

Of course she also likes chewing on real bones (beef bones purchased at pet store) and fake bones (nylabone for power chewers) and rawhide.

We actually like it when she’s busy chewing on one of her bones or a piece of rawhide because that means we have a few minutes of peace. Midnight really loves being, playing and interacting with us .. so it’s nice when we find something that can take her attention off of us for a while!

We started giving her a rawhide in the shape of a bone almost every night a few months ago. We never let her eat the whole large rawhide bone in one sitting though … it would be way too expensive to keep her stalked up in rawhide if we had! Instead we’d let her chew one end off and then take it away, then the next night the other knob and so on.

The only problem was that for most of this year her appetite for her regular food seems to have gone down a lot. Now she’s a Lab and they love to eat … so that’s a big problem! We started to wonder if she was sick, but she seems fine otherwise and she still will eat our human food treats or her cookies with the same excitement that she’s always had.

What I really think was happening is that the rawhide takes longer to digest than her regular dry dog food so she might have had a full feeling when presented with a big bowl of her own food. Also … she definitely likes our food better than her food … so that might be why she started to turn her nose up at her own food.

Over the last few weeks we’ve slowed down on the rawhide treats. We purchased small rawhide bones (about the size of your palm) and she only gets one every three days or so now. Her appetite for her regular food has picked up too.

Of course she still begs every night for her chew treats. She’ll actually sit and stare at me for hours with a look like “you’ve hurt me” on the nights that we don’t give her a rawhide. Darn dog!

Running through the snow

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Wordless Wednesday

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This isn’t my dog, but like mine, this one seems to be having a ball running through the snow. I love the goofy look on it’s face too. It’s eyes appear to be looking in two different directions! Silly dog!

If we get any more snow this winter I’ll have to take a picture of my dog, Midnight, rolling and doing her snow face plants. It’s hilarious.

Poked and prodded

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Today turned out to be busy!

My husband usually has Mondays off and works the rest of the week, but he did someone a favor and traded shifts so he worked on Monday and had today off instead. Good timing on the switch as I had a doctors appointment in the afternoon and if I had taken the subway as I’d planned to do it would have taken me well over an hour to get there. Instead it only took about 15 minutes by car!

I’ve been seeing my family doctor and other doctors fairly regularly because my Crohn’s just won’t settle down … plus I had to go in today to get another shot of Depro Provera. No I’m not using it as birth control – even though that is how it’s working on my system … we’re trying it out to see if takes care of my endometriosis. I’ve been on it for almost a year now and since I don’t get my period while I’m on it I’ll have to say it helped because now I don’t have those horrible horrible period pains that were almost making me pass out in pain prior to my starting Depro Provera.

The only bad side-effect is that it’s caused me to gain at least 10 additional pounds … since I have Crohns that’s not too bad (Crohn’s tends to make you lose weight!), but still … I don’t like the extra weight – not at all. Hmmm maybe I should try some Solo Slim ?

I’ve also been having a lot of trouble with my back lately. I’d say it’s been hurting more and more for over a year – especially if I walk a few blocks or do house cleaning like sweeping or vacuuming. I think it’s because I tend to lean forward a little bit when I do those things. Anyway, my back goes into spasms that get worse and worse until i lie down and let my back muscles rest.

At the beginning of February – when my husband was in the hospital with a heart problem – I did a lot of walking back and forth to the hospital. I was carrying things back and forth as well. I think that did my back in … because sometime during those first few days of the month my left thigh went numb and now my whole left leg is pretty numb. I have Vitamin D deficiency too so that might be affecting the bones in my back.

So in addition to seeing the doctor today we also made a trip to the hospitals x-ray department and had my lower back x-rayed.

Then it was off to a drug store to pick up some digestive enzymes. Since my bowels are inflamed due to the Crohn’s disease it’s causing me not to digest some of the foods I eat very well. I also don’t digest some of the pills I have to take each day either … so I’m going to try taking digestive enzymes for a while and see if helps at all.

Finally after being out for about four hours we arrived back home. I didn’t get to rest my sore back though … my husband wanted me to edit one of his posts and he always seems to have trouble resizing photos and then adding them to his blog. I’ve even written out directions but he seems to always need my help. Arghhhh! It’s not that hard – right?

I think I”m just going to relax for the rest of the evening. God knows I need to recover from being poked and prodded all day! LOL But first – dinner! I made a roast yesterday so we’re going to have leftovers … easy!

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