Puppy Days, Woe Is Me

I like puzzles, but this is ridiculous.

It took me all afternoon today to piece back together this new library book--new as in the library just bought it.

When I left for swimming lessons this morning, I had been careful to pick up all books off the floor because Diesel (our seven-month-old Great Dane) had eaten an early reader chapter book yesterday while we were gone. I didn't think he would actually take a book off the book shelf to shred it. Suddenly I worried. Would the library believe me when I said, "My dog ate it"?

If Diesel weren't destroying things I cared about or needed, his fascination with shredding paper would be amusing. He takes tissues out of tissue boxes, lies on the floor with it between his paws, and then tears off a piece and spits it out. And then he tears off another piece and spit it out. He never eats it. Just strews it all over. We can't keep wood toys in the house, either, because he chews them to pieces. Both come from trees, so I wonder if it's a certain smell that attracts him. Moreover, I wonder what kind of bedding he had at the breeder's.


Sadly, it's not just books, tissues, and wooden toys that suffer. Our new used couch is also taking a beating. Check out the stuffing on the floor. All I can say is I'm sooooooooo glad this was a free couch.

We like to have a crate for when we leave a dog home alone, for his sake and ours. We used to use one with our former pets, and learned quickly that crate training worked very well. But our trailer is too small to accommodate a dog crate his size.

As a stopgap, we tried leaving him in the bathroom, but Diesel Dog opens the under-sink cabinets, pulls out towels to lay on, pulls out magazines and shreds them, and takes toothpaste off the counters, probably to clean his teeth after he's done gnawing on the bottom of the bathroom door.

Like ND's finger painting poop escapades, I hope this phase passes quickly. Fortunately, the librarian believed me. Apparently, God gave her a paper shredding dog, too.

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