My wife derives grim satisfaction from buying dog toys that advertise their indestructibility, and then watching as the dog destroys them, often within hours of their purchase.
“That came with a one-year guarantee,” she says, pointing to the fragments littering the rug.
The dog reduces heavy duty rubber bones to tiny pellets, and rope toys to threads. A lot of dog toys are made to resemble a dead animal – a squirrel, say, or a duck – with some kind of crinkly material inside. They’re designed to be tortured at length, but the dog is only interested in their immediate dismemberment.
During her quest my wife discovers a straightforward dog ball that squeals when you squeeze it, and also when you unsqueeze it. The dog alternates between applying and releasing…
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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 14 March 2025