The Stealth Stick Attack

Our dog loves to chew on things.   She’s lost her last puppy tooth, a final canine that the veterinarian wiggled out when she was under for her spaying (which we saved for the Puppy Tooth Fairy).  She likes to chew on lots of things, deer antlers, bully sticks, rawhide, duck feet, and, of course, sticks.

She’s gone through all she can find in our front yard while she’s on her runner leash outside and moved on to large pieces of mulch bark.   Sticks are an all time favorite though.   A few days ago I was playing fetch with her and we strayed into the neighbor’s yard.   On their ground they had a decent number of small to medium-sized sticks.

As I picked them up, I would throw them into our yard and Matisse would run after them, picking the most recently thrown stick to carry around in her mouth.   I made a decent pile of sticks under a tree where she could get to them and told everyone to leave them there, as it was her, “stick pile”.

Every time she’s been out she takes turns chewing on one or another.   They’ve gotten spread out over time and are dwindling in size and number, directly proportional to the amount of stick shreds our yard is gaining.

We have to be careful though, as she sometimes does a, “stealth stick attack” on us, carting a smaller stick in her mouth, hidden under her growing beard, when we bring her in.   This morning while I was out running errands she managed to bring one in, unnoticed by my husband.   I came home to bits of stick on the bed, on the bedroom carpet, in the bathroom on the chair in the living room and at the front door.

I didn’t see the offending stick…there was nothing left.

The Big Boy Update:  This morning my husband was telling my son how he wanted to lose some weight.  My son had this advice for him: "Okay, then cook spinach more often. Because one, it’s yummy. And two, because it’ll make you lose weight.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked me, “When I talk to Alexa does someone have to be there, on the Internet?”

Non-shedding:  We heard Wheaten Terriers were low-shedders but weren’t completely non-shedding.   I started brushing her regularly, mostly daily, since we got her in early November.   I haven’t seen a dog hair on anything yet and surprisingly, not much in the dog brush either.   I just cleaned it out for the first time after four months.   She may not be shed-free, but it’s good enough for me.