Happiest Dog in the World!!

I saw a blog post giving me the idea to make my own dog toys. I learned that at Petsmart, you can buy packages of just squeakers.

JUST SQUEAKERS!!!

Now, let me preface this story with a little explanation of what my little dog, Fillmore, is like with a toy containing a squeaker. He is a dog on a mission. As soon as he gets a new toy with a squeaker, it becomes his mission in life to get that squeaker out. He chews the squeaker until I am on the brink of insanity. He inevitably creates a hole in the toy, pulls out all of the stuffing usually leaving a mess from one end of the house to the other, and finally gets his reward. We are then treated to a show like no other. He will toss the freed squeaker in the air and catch it. He'll lay it on the ground and roll around on it. Chase it. Growl at it. Set it in front of me to tease me with it. Basically, he loses his cool over squeakers. It's highly amusing.

So, when I told the kids that we could get a package of just squeakers, we all got evil grins on our faces at just the idea of raining bunches of squeakers down on Fillmore's head. He would likely explode from excitement. We felt quite certain that this might equate to winning the lottery for our crazy little Fillmore.

So, we sewed up some dog toys. Savannah took 2 extra squeakers downstairs to Fillmore who had been waiting at the foot of the stairs, shaking with anticipation. He could hear us squeaking those squeakers in Savannah's room while we were working and when Savannah got tired of stuffing our new dog toys, she decided the moment had come to give Fillmore his squeakers.

She was squeaking them in her hands as she went down the stairs, all the while Fillmore's tail is wagging so violently we thought it might break off. She puts her hands out over his head squeaks the squeakers one last time and drops them.

Fillmore looks down at the ground, then back up at Savannah, and sits down.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with that?" was our interpretation of his expression.

She stepped on the squeaker to squeak it again. He perked up his ears, but looked back at the squeaker and left the room.

What a let down. I guess the reward of chewing the squeaker out of the toy is what makes the squeaker so appealing. So we finished our dog toys and gave him one of those. This is him playing with it. (And, that's a belly band he's wearing. He has a proclivity for peeing on things in the house he feels he needs to claim for his own. We made them pink to punish him for this terrible habit.)

I tried to get a picture of him with the toys before he tore them apart, but he was going so crazy that all of my pictures of him are blurry. Honestly, I don't think anyone has enjoyed something I made as much as Fillmore has enjoyed these toys.