The Cookie Chronicles

Although Mr. B will always be Number One among all of Cookie’s (surprisingly numerous) possessions, there is another favorite pastime, not involving the ball, which is tug-of-war. Our discovery of this was a late-breaking development.

For many years Cookie showed zero interest in playing with anything other than Mr. B. Other types of balls were tried, to no avail. Small soft frisbees were tried – size appropriate – and Cookie, who can run, leap, twist and catch the ball on the fly, refused to even give it the old college try. Many dogs like stuffed animal toys, but Cookie didn’t go past the first sniff. So we stopped experimenting.

A couple of years ago, a friend brought over a dinosaur toy, and in the mysterious way that rules dog logic, Cookie decided this was a pretty cool thing. And suddenly, tug-of-war was on the menu. It quickly became a mandatory evening activity, usually right after Mr. B went to bed in the spice drawer.

“Wanna fight?” we’d ask, and Cookie would grab her dinosaur and begin growling in a particularly fierce, guttural, primal tone, challenging us to try to take it away. She showed unusual ferocity at such times, sounding like a completely different dog. So different in fact that it took us a while to confirm that she wasn’t going to bite an arm off in the middle of a battle.

Many dogs, especially puppies when teething, take naturally to such games. We speculated that due to her compromised childhood (see Chronicle #1) Cookie had never had anyone play with her at all before she came to us fully grown. Somehow Mr. Dino turned on her fight switch.

It didn’t take long for Cookie to tear large holes in it and pull out wads of stuffing. It’s rather amazing how much stuffing can come out of such a toy – roughly enough to re-upholster a medium-size sofa. Once all the stuffing along with the squeaker had been scattered around the living room, it was time to head to the pet store and see what else might be found in the tug toy department.

It turns out that Toys R Us has fewer human toys than the average pet store has toys for dogs. You have your choice of animals, reptiles, insects, and others in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. They all make some sort of noise, which seems to be essential if you want your dog to take notice. So we bought a beaver and a bear, trying not to look too horrified at the cost, and proudly brought them home to Cookie.

Stuffed dog toys turn out to be some sort of gateway to your bank account. It’s rare to find one that costs less than $15 and lasts more than a few days. Some don’t make it past the first hour. After a number of such trips, we started totaling up the potential cost of keeping Cookie in tug-ables and concluded it could involve a second mortgage on our home.

Not to be deterred, we set about looking for a non-stuffed option. The best we could find was a thick, twisted rope, knotted at both ends. This was a massive fail in several ways. No squeaker. No resemblance to any type of creature, not even a snake. Too big for Cookie to get a solid grip that she could maintain in the heat of battle.

Back to the toy store, where I stumbled upon what appeared to be the solution – Mr. Duck. Mr. Duck combined the best aspects of all the previous toys. He was a cute animal, with a yellow beak, protruding eyes, fabric wings and legs that consisted of a small twisted rope running right through his torso. He made a sort of quacking noise when tugged or shaken, and he was the right size for Cookie. Yes, there was a small torso that might possibly contain a bit of stuffing. But as my sainted mother was fond of saying, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Sold.

Well, Mr. Duck was a smash hit with the Cookster. Great fights became a regular event, and not just on Friday nights. The little duck was a gamer, and pretty darn rugged… until the day I found his legs – the rope – lying on the living room rug. Cookie had pulled them completely out of him. That was the beginning of the end for Mr. Duck. Without the legs to hang on to, the torso became a grab bag, and sure enough, small holes began to show up. Which became big holes soon enough. And then, one sad day, I found those familiar tufts of white stuffing scattered around the living room.

The jury is still out on how this will be resolved. The legless torso of Mr. Duck has not yet been discarded but provides little incentive for a good old fashioned fight. The option to purchase yet another duck (or beaver or bumblebee or brontosaurus) is being weighed. We may have to cancel the remodel of our bathroom in order to continue funding Cookie’s toy habit. But then again, those fights are important events in her daily routine. Maybe not perfect, but good fun.