May 12, 2009
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Koji’s New Best Friend
Koji is my buddy. (If Xanga’s server has come back up, you’ll be able to see how he looked about six years ago, on his third birthday.) The shifting collection of cats that from time to time share my bed, often snuggle up to the big smelly old dog who is always there. When he is not outside, the bed is his favorite place to be. This week, something else is always there with him.
His new best bud isn’t black, nor is it new and shiny. It is the off-red of red rubber, and when he found it alongside the road on a walk last week it was scuffed and scarred. Doug said he grabbed it right up and refused to give it up. That’s pretty much how it has been since he brought it into the house. He sleeps with his chin resting on it. He paces through the house with it gripped in his jaws, his toenails clickety-clicking on the floor, as he sometimes does with big bones, looking for places to bury them.But he hasn’t buried the Kong behind a sofa cushion or dropped it in a wastebasket for safekeeping, as he often does with bones. He has yet to find a safe enough place to stash his new toy, so it’s right there by his head on the bed now, as he naps. If a cat comes near, he’ll rouse enough to snap and let the cat know it’s entering a forbidden zone.
Since Koji came home with Kong, he hasn’t sat expectantly when returning from a trip outside, waiting for the usual biscuit that is his reward for bringing the snap-end of his chain back for us to hang beside the door. If Kong isn’t in his mouth, it’s waiting for him on the bed and he goes to it immediately. Since the day a week or so ago when he carried Kong into the house for the first time, he has begged a rawhide chew from Doug only twice and from me just once. The rest of the time, he’s been chewing on Kong.
This is fine with me. The expense of keeping that dog supplied with chews has been a major one all his life. He was taken from his mother too young. He would have been killed along with his six brothers if we hadn’t taken him that day. His oral fixation has always been constant and active, and was completely indiscriminate until we taught him that only the chewies we gave him were permissible. Until then, he ate clothing, furniture, firewood, plastic, …whatever was there, except for some rubber chew toys we bought for him. He rejected all of them, which is why we were so pleasantly surprised that he had latched onto Kong.
There are other hopeful ramifications besides the economic ones, to his finding a non-caloric way to satisfy his oral compulsions. He might be able to go off the weight-control food and eat regular senior rations. He might even live longer and more healthily, but I’ll have to slip him some rawhide occasionally, to keep his teeth clean.
Comments (10)
Awwwww!
My Jack Russell needs a constant supply too. I don’t know that it’s an oral fixation, but perhaps an aggression issue. He’s a hunter, so if he doesn’t have bunnies to chase, he needs a bone to gnaw. He weighs around 20 pounds, but we still have to get him compressed rawhide bones for very large dogs or he’ll be done with them in a day.
My cousin’s dog had a kong and was the same way. She just loved that thing.
It’s funny how dogs will just latch onto something, isn’t it? I might buy every dog toy known on the planet, but my two aren’t interested in 99% of them. My big dog loves Nylabones and won’t touch Kongs. Fortunately, the Nylabones don’t wear out easily, and they keep his teeth clean. My little dog has an affinity for stuffed hedgehogs – not stuffed bones, or stuffed balls, or stuffed anything else – only hedgehogs. I don’t know how he knows the difference, but apparently he does.
We have a dog with an ‘oral fixation’ as well. I discovered with her its a boredom thing. So we have started taking her for drives since I don’t/can’t walk. We drop her off on a nice quiet back road and she can run about 24-25 miles an hour and comes home happy! Kind of an expensive habit considering gas prices!! Maybe we should try a kong. Those are the things you put treats inside of I think?
I’m sure it has lots of interesting (to Koji) scents and tastes on it
Good for Koji. My dogs have favorite toys. Jolly Balls and Jesse is pretty much obsessed with any and all toys. The ferrets have their favorites as well. Scipio has a gawd awful fugly neon orange & green stuffed lizard. He drags that thing everywhere.
..but i’m left wondering if there’s a pooch out there somewhere pining for his favourite toy..and the story behind how it got to the side of the road ‘back of beyond’.
Is Kong strong enough to last? It’s good he’s found a friendly chew.
@the_nthian - It might have bounced out of the back of a pickup truck. The roads are kinda bumpy now that the ice and snow are gone. I, too, wondered about the dog that lost it.
@Jaynebug - It appears to be indestructible. About the same time he found Kong, Koji found a tennis ball along the road. It has been reduced to fragments.
Oral fixation, LOL, my dogs have no such excuses! Nothing is off limits with the puppy, he is mowing the lawn and the shrubs, and I live in AZ (there IS no lawn) – he just eats whatever he sees, and he runs away from me when I tell him to stop.
Cute that Kong story, it’s something that he scored all on his own, very very cute !