The Buckets by Greg Cravens for September 22, 2024

Preemptive sanity saver.

Working squeaky balls… I used to do QA at the factory. Am now psychiatrically retired with disability…

Poor Dogzilla. All excited to once again have his favorite toy, only to be denied. Again.

Just had to put our dog to sleep yesterday. Wife does not like squeaky balls. She and grandson already are planning the next dog. All I can say is do whatever it takes to keep that mouth busy.

Our English Mastiff hated the squealer in the toys. He’ get a new toy and chew out the squeaker and spit it out. Didn’t take us long to find him a toy that didn’t have them.

Did you know that if you squeeze a small rodent hard enough, it sounds just like a squeaky toy?

Our first dog shredded his toys in seconds to get the squeaker out; then he was done with the toy. I used to palm the squeaker and step on the largest of the remains while squeaking it. He’d go nuts trying to find it. I was able to extend his interest from seconds to minutes. After a few minutes though, there wasn’t a big enough chunk left to play with.

Thank you, that was starting irritate me too.

My dogs kill the squeakers on contact! And they are so proud of themselves they bring the carcass to show us.

When my niece was a little-y, I bought her a cute pair of sneakers with squeakers in the heels. She LOOOOVED them and wore them everywhere! Her mother thought they were great at first, because she could always tell where her kid was…but, alas, the bloom soon wore off that rose, and the squeaky sneakers eventually got a secret squeakerectomy.

Last dog, Moxie, was a great destroyer of toys. I learned to get ones without stuffing. It’s amazing how much stuffing can fit in a small dog toy.

Current dog, Cookie, doesn’t care that much about toys. She has some, but rarely plays with them.

When Masterpiece showed “Bleak House,” our dachshund Angel would always bring a toy when she joined me. She thought it was “Squeak House.”

I have a rubber (vinyl) toy circus bear, that is 58 years old, and still has a working squeaker. It’s a treasure.