Remind me again why I wanted a dog?

This used to be the centerpiece on my dining room table. (And a bag of felt and jingle bells to make the dog a collar for Christmas photos.) (He only ate one of the jingle bells, surprisingly. That will be an interesting walk in a few days.)



This was also part of my centerpiece.



This was a brand-new bag of cough drops that was not even IN the dining room, but is now ground into my dining room carpet because when you mix them with dog slobber they get super sticky and gross.

I left him for 30 minutes. THIRTY MINUTES. He's been good for up to an hour lately, and was so good all morning I thought I'd reward him.

Bad idea.


Bad dog.

Sigh.

Penguin

Damn idiot dog ate ANOTHER toy in the 15 minutes Lorelai was in the bathtub, because he was pissed that he didn't have my undivided attention. Which he never gets ANYWAY because I have a TODDLER and what is going to happen when I also have a NEWBORN in roughly six months?




I think the thing that frustrates me most about this is that I never catch him in the act, so I can't punish him. When someone does something that makes me so mad I cry, I want to be able to let them know they've done wrong. And I can't do that because dogs are too dumb to remember that they are the ones who ripped up yet another toy less than 10 minutes ago. So I end up yelling ineffectually at the ceiling instead of being able to spray-bottle him or something. Which may be why I get so mad I cry when he pulls crap like this.

Owl hat

This cute owl hat, which is brand new and which Lorelai has yet to actually wear, used to have two complete ears with cute little tassels on them. He did this because e was mad that I locked him out of the room I sew in while I made a blanket for a friend's baby. Even though Kevin was upstairs calling for him to come play. He only wanted me, apparently. Sigh.

Pumpkin

It's a good thing we knew we were having kids and pets when we bought white sofas, so our expectations of unstained-ness have been low from the beginning.

Brain surgery

Dr. Torg needs to works on his finesse in the OR.

This is the face...

...of a dog who was left uncrated for 30 whole minutes while I was out, and didn't destroy anything!




Good boy, Torg!

Isn't it, like, a crime of nature to kill a unicorn?

On the upside, we're almost out of stuffed animals for him to destroy.

Not. Happy. With my dog right now.

Back in the 80s, when Pound Puppies got really big, they had these make-your-own kits. My mom made this Pound Puppy for me from one of those kits web I was like 4.

I didn't hang on to a lot of my childhood toys. Just a few special ones that I wanted to pass on to my kids.

Lorelai has only recently been given this one because the pom-pom nose is a choking hazard. Now I trust her not to pull it off a swallow it. Wish I could say the same for my idiot dog.

We took him to a trainer last night for a consultation. The guy said the chewing is basically going to be the hardest thing ever to fix, because he mostly chews in the baby's toys because he can't tell the difference between them and his own. I think that's a lie. Some of the baby's toys he's learned he can't have and he leaves them alone. But others he is convinced are fair game. Mostly he does is when he wants our attention and for whatever reason isn't getting it. (In this case, I was asleep and Kevin was changing Lorelai's diaper or something. We also lose a lot of things when one of us is home alone, giving her a bath or putting her to bed, and there's no one else to run dog interference.)

So, I don't know what to do about that. I DO know that the dog is on thin ice today. (This is two days after he ate part of the ear off my childhood teddy bear, which pissed me off and THAT wasn't made by my mother.)

Puppy.

My mom got Lorelai this really adorable stuffed puppy for Christmas.



It's not so adorable anymore. A lot of the toys he's destroyed, I can fix. Not so much here.

The worst part about having a dog who rips shit to pieces is that if you don't catch him doing it, you can't yell or tell him "bad dog" or spray him with the spray bottle. You just have to...not really do anything but clean up the mess and once again consider selling him to gypsies.

(I threaten to sell him to gypsies a lot. I don't know what kind of gypsies would buy him, though. Most you probably couldn't pay to take him.)

Fundraiser for Torg's new buddy Hudson

Torg has not eaten anything inappropriate today. It's only 8:20, so there's still time, but this is about something else.

Friends of ours just adopted the sweetest 2-year-old Rottweiler. His name is Hudson, and he and Torg have become good friends. He is the biggest love of a dog ever. The catch? He needs hip and elbow surgery, and it is expensive.


The rescue Amanda and Chris got him from is doing a fundraiser over the next few months to help them cover some of the cost of the surgery. Spread the word--if you or people you know have a few dollars marked for an animal charity, please consider donating to Hudson's surgery fund. Every dollar helps.

Hudson and his sister, Sophie

 

The link to donate is here. (The rescue named him Claude. I think Hudson suits him much better, don't you?)

We will now return to our regularly scheduled destruction.

Now he's noisy again.

This is one of those Quiet Spot tag silencer bags. This is the second one. He ate the first one too. This one he ate within 2 days of us getting it.

Remote.

It still works, but just barely. We thought he had his Nylabone. We were wrong.

Good thing this was a knockoff.

Torg has this epically annoying habit of chewing his collar/tags, and it looks like he finally managed to destroy his harness. Luckily, it's a $15 knockoff version of the Gentle Leader or Miracle Walker or whatever that really pricey one is, so it's not a huge deal financially, but still. I bet if I added up all the things he's eaten, I'd cry over how much money we've spent on inadvertent chew toys for this dog.

Yet another baby toy.

This is what happens when I and the baby are both sick all week and can't take the dog for proper walks. I can't really blame him for this, he was really bored.

I do, however, blame him for the two brand-new boxes of Kleenex he ate, because I needed those.

This would be the SECOND time I've had to repair this toy.

Hokie Bird pillow pet. I already stitched the strap back on a few days ago. This dog, man. I don't even know when he had the opportunity to DO this. He's been with me, I thought, all morning.

Bunny down.

He's been working on Lorelai's Easter bunny for a while. He finally ripped its face off. RIP, Easter bunny.

Bra.

That is the half-masticated strap of a one-month-old Victoria's Secret bra. Kevin had taken Torg on a walk while I showered, and they got home before I got dressed so the clothes I left sitting on the bed to change into were, apparently, up for grabs.

I think if I really thought about just how many dollars worth of stuff this dog has destroyed in the past two months, I would throw up. The slippers and the bra is over $100, destroyed in a week's time.

What annoys me most is that while he CHEWS on Kevin's stuff, my stuff is the only stuff he ever does actual damage to. Except the headset. But even that is still totally useable, if no longer pretty. Not sure why the dog has it in for my clothing over anyone else's in the house. Especially considering he doesn't seem to dislike me -- if anything, I'd argue that he adores me, if the way he follows me around and climbs in my lap and loses his fool mind whenever I return from an outing is any indication.

I just don't get it. Dogs are weird.

Headphones. Again.

I make Kevin wear these to play "Call of Duty" because I don't like the gun sounds. This is the second time Torg has gotten hold of them. (Somehow he seems to only do superficial damage, nothing that affects how they work, but still.)

You'd think we'd learn not to leave them where he can reach them. You'd also think we'd learn that he can reach anything that isn't behind closed doors.

I really, really loved these slippers.

I've been fighting the don't-eat-my-slippers battle since day one; looks like the closet door dust get closed and I finally lost. I'm really pissed, too. These slippers were really, really comfortable.

Pills

He hasn't actually destroyed pills, don't worry. I just thought this might be a good way to solicit pill-giving tricks from people.

I've wrapped them in cheese, ham, bread. He eats around them. I've tried shoving them down his throat. He gags them back up.

He's not generally a bright dog, but he's super smart at getting out of taking his meds.

Suggestions? Miracle tricks? Offers to come do it for me?

Gloves.

Oh hi, blog. I've been neglecting you.

Mostly because I've been very busy reading "Fifty Shaded of Oh-So-Bad-But-I-Can't-Stop-Reading", but also because Torg just hasn't been all that destructive lately. Thank God for crates, yes?

Although, as you can see above, he does get bored while Lorelai takes her baths. Sigh.

With all the plastic this dog eats, he should be literally pooping rainbows.

It's a good thing this wasn't real.

This used to be a plastic chili pepper. Good thing it wasn't real or Torg would be having a really uncomfortable evening.

Even while crated, Torg the Destroyer lives up to his name.

The best part? This blanket wasn't even IN THE CRATE.

I should have taken a picture of it before I pulled it out to assess the damage. It used to cover the sofa (so we don't have to vacuum the sofa eight times a day like we do the floor). He got hold of a corner through one of the teeny little openings in the wire crate and pulled till he had about 85% of the (queen-sized) blanket inside with him. Then he destroyed it, because that is what he does.

I was going to buy him a crate blanket anyway. Instead I just bought a new sofa blanket and this one now lives in his crate.

Doofus dog.

And then he ate the pack n play.

I put him in the basement so I could vacuum up all the rice and he ate holes in the pack n play.

What is the going rate that gypsies pay for dogs these days?

Oh. My. God.

He gets crated when we leave the house from now on. Because OH MY GOD.

He still has enough fingers to hold his microphone, at least.

I know it's hard to tell what this is. This was the best picture I could get.

What you are looking at is the mangled hand of Rock 'n Roll (or Rock 'n Play, or Rock 'n Sing, or whatever it's called) Elmo. This actually happened sometime last week, I thought I posted it then but it doesn't look like I did.

Red-letter day!

I don't think Torg destroyed anything yesterday! Probably because he was asleep in the sofa all day after being up since 3 a.m. with assorted digestive issues (you know, dog, if you stopped eating inappropriate things your tummy might not be so upset all the time), but still. Nothing destroyed! Amazing!

In other news, according to his paperwork, today is Torg's second birthday. Happy birthday, you big doofus.

Apparently Torg finds this toy as annoying as I do.

These were my favorite flip-flops.

Penguins are flightless bird anyway, right?

Blockhead.

Good thing Lorelai never really liked this one.

Shalini wins.

I fold.

Ball!

I timed this one. Seven seconds. Possibly a new record.

Cupcake.

Instead of traditional eggs, Lorelai got a bunch of plastic ice cream cones as cupcakes that open up like eggs. Now she has one less.

In the dog's defense, she did feed this to him. So it's really not his fault.

Well, it's not fatal.

First Important Baby Toy casualty. Frog has been chewed. Not beyond usability, but this dog is on my shit list today.

I thought these Tuffy toys were supposed to be virtually indestructible.

Six minutes, he had this thing. Six. Minutes.

That was the best leash, too. Damn.

A mile into our walk, Torg poops. I pick up the poop (which contained an impressive number of tiny foam beads). As I am tying the bag off, he is busy doing this.

You can imagine how much fun the mile walk back home was.

RIP, Patti Mayonnaise.

The worst part about Torg destroying my microbead pillow is not that she is gone. It's that she bled teeny tiny foam beads all over the damn house. We'll be finding these things for years.

(Yes, I named my pillow Patti Mayonnaise. What of it?)

Yum. Bed.

He ever does this to MY bed, I'm gonna be really pissed.

This basket used to hold stuff.

Specifically, his toys. Dog, once the toys are out of the basket, you can put them back IN it, then take them out again, then put them back, ad nauseum. No need to destroy it for no longer containing toys.

Ouch.

Leash burn hurts like a mother.

Beach ball down.

Looks like freaking Edward Cullen came for a visit.

My dog destroys stuff.

This is Torgerson. Torgerson destroys stuff.

I know, all dogs destroy stuff. But Torgerson destroys a LOT of stuff. He's lived with us for less than two weeks and he's already destroyed:

1. A leash
2. Three sippy cups
3. At least 20 balls from Lorelai's ball pit
   
4. His bed
5. A pillow
6. A baby block
7. A stuffed penguin
8. His stuffed bone
9. A stuffed duck that plays music
10. The corners of half of Lorelai's books
11. The black ball from my in-laws' croquet set
12. The basket we kept his toys in
13. The wastebasket from Lorelai's room
14. Two beach balls
15. Lorelai's pig spoon

Now, not all of these items have been damaged beyond repair/future use (the croquet ball is still functional, but it's got a lot of bite marks in it), but if he's chewed it to the point that I have groaned and said, "Oh, shit, not again", I consider it fodder for this new blog of mine.

A friend who also has a rescue dog about Torg's size said her dog did similar things for a while, but once she fully settled into their house and realized she was there for good, she stopped. So there's hope that one day I can leave a room without fearing for my sofa cushions (which, to date, have not been destroyed, but have been moved from the sofa into the dining room).

In the meantime, I shall blog Torg's destruction. Enjoy.