Have you met our lovely labrador retriever, AnaBelle?

She’s 9 months old and lovely or not she’s a menace.

To be fair, I know that lab puppies are known for their chewing.  I know this because every time that I have contacted our vet regarding something else that she’s chewed or ingested, he laughs at me. ”Well, you do have a lab.”  Funny how that doesn’t seem so funny to me at the time.

Our laundry room doubles as her kennel. This puppy has quite discriminating taste and has managed to do her own decorating in “her room” over the past 7 months.  She’s made it quite clear that the textured ‘monterey drag’ finish on the walls is not acceptable to her.  To provide evidence of her dislike for the wall finish she managed to carve out portions of the wall including the drywall.  Once a small chunk of drywall is removed she begins to peel away the paper.  But her decorating activities have not stopped there.

It’s clear that she is not fond of stainless steel front loading appliances.  We have identified her signature gnaw marks on the doors of both the washer and the dryer over the past few weeks.

Our previous beloved lab, Bogey loved to wolf down his food.  Since this can be deadly for big dogs, we decided to get one of the elevated dog dishes for him.  We found one at Orvis a few years back and purchased the wooden one they had in the store.  As you can see here from the picture, our loverly AnaBelle has made it clear she wishes for something perhaps more feminine in design.

She’s chewed through her puppy pillow, which rang in at just over $400 in emergency vet bills.  She’s chewed through her most recently acquired dog bed that I managed to repair…albeit only temporarily.  I noticed that she’s been working on that one again.   She also managed to chew up the rug that used to be placed on the wood floors just on the other side of the kennel “gate”.   She was able to coerce that rug under the gate and made short order of it one afternoon.  It was an old rug but it certainly didn’t deserve that!  The kennel gate has been the recipient of her signature teeth marks.  So,  I won’t begin to list the numerous “indestructible” puppy chew toys we have had to throw out.

We have to keep her in the kennel during the day while we are at work. This is primarily due to my fear that her decorating preferences will be brought to light in by showing me how much she despises the furnishings in the remainder of the house.

This was apparent in our most recent incident when Chris woke up one morning and told me he thought one of the pillows might need a repair.  There was down fluff all over the bed.  After further inspection I found that it was not a pillow that was leaking feathery down everywhere.  Apparently AnaBelle decided that the down comforter on our bed was not to her liking and she chewed up one corner of it which was sort of tucked in the sheet when we went to bed.  Once it was pulled out from the tuck…the fluff was everywhere.

She’s currently banned from the master bedroom where I have replaced the down comforter with something more fluffy and higher thread count as well.  She attempted to rest there a number of times since I replaced it on Friday.

Brat.