Destructopup Case Files, Victims #1, 3-8: Rope Toy Collection

Chewy LOVES rope toys. They're great for chewing, playing tug, going shaky shaky, and most importantly, shredding. Sometimes he eats the little fibers that he rips off, and a day later, rainbows come out the other end.

Upon getting a brand new rope toy, Chewy runs around the house chewing in every single one of his favorite spots. Then he wants to play tug with it forever, and after a few days or weeks of innocent chewing, he finds a weak spot in the toy. That's when he enters DESTRUCTOPUP MODE, and we end up with one of these victims here:

That last orange one used to be in the shape of a bone, but he removed all the end bits - they promptly ended up in the trash. I have already shared the tale of Froggy before, so I will focus on the other ones here. If a rope toy has a tennis ball on the end and you leave Chewy with it unattended even for a few minutes, he will defuzz the tennis ball. If a rope toy has knots on the end, he will pull on the knots until he can undo them, then unravel the rope and shred the strings. If a rope toy has all its ends tucked in, you can bet that Chewy will eventually find and expose them.

I keep Chewy's rope toys on the counter when no one is around, so the destruction is a rather slow process. He is so happy when pulling apart his ropes, sometimes I just don't have the heart to tell him no. But once he has done a certain amount of damage, I take them out of his toy rotation and they end up sitting in the cabinet. Every now and then I bring one out when I need to keep him distracted, like while doing his nails, because his love of destroying rope toys is pretty all-consuming. I decided it was finally time to throw out this collection of dilapidated ropes, but I let Chewy play with them one last time. He was ecstatic, and wanted to hoard them all.

Oh, happy day!

But when I threw them all in the trashcan, he was not so pleased.

Not the garbage!

You're gonna buy me more, right?

We currently have one of those 4' ropes made from t-shirt strips. It has been holding up pretty well with only supervised play, but I'm sure Chewy has been plotting its demise for quite awhile. It's only a matter of time!