Full Concentration Required

Barley, a dog, grips a soft toy tightly in her paws and squints. Not visible in the photo is the toy’s ear that she is earnestly chewing on with her molars.

While Barley is not conventionally destructive with her toys, she does seem to find small unstuffed fabric “ears” and “fins” to be offensive to her sensibilities, or perhaps irresistible in their mouthfeel. As such, she will often isolate these on new toys and try to chew them off. Since her front lower incisors were removed, her best scissor-like option is her fourth upper premolar, right where her cheek ends. For whatever reason, she treats using this to worry her way through fabric like the most intense activity she could possible be doing: She lies perfectly still, her eyes squinted shut, making each little chomp very deliberately and forcefully, as if the fabric will escape is she lets it slip even a little.