A Boxing Day disaster! 🐶

A friend lived in a beautiful old cottage with a long pantry running the length of the property containing her chicken’s eggs, large fridge, welly store, and various food products. She had a very large Italian Spinone and used to leave it alone to go shopping. One day she returned to find he had learned how to open the door and had eaten a box and a half of All Bran. She was obviously after a balanced diet as she also ate a dozen eggs. Needless to say it was a long 24 hours for my friend jumping up and down to open the garden door.

Like Luckygirl we once had a rabbit which spent a lot of time indoors and cut the phone off. On the third occasion the engineer said sorrowfully that he would have to charge us this time as three times suggested we hadn’t learned our lesson.

On a similar vein, I bought my husband a circulation booster similar to those advertised by Ian Botham this Christmas. He was trying it out for the first time when our dog decided to lick it! He gave a little yelp and sat in the corner looking dejected poor thing. We now make sure he can't get anywhere near it but I'm afraid we did laugh.

Dogs chew things, it's what they do. When my son was 2 he was bought, for Chritmas, a wind up dog that yapped and jumped. After opening all the other presents I was clearing up all the paper and boxes but couldn't find the dog. Eventually I found it in pieces behind the sofa as my dog decided he didn't want an interloper to join us. He wasn't a puppy he was 5 years old.

We knew an electrical repair shop that said they regularly had to mend standard lamp cables chewed by puppies and parrots.
One of my DDs had a pet rat fully house-trained I might add. My mother came to visit and was frightened of it and it chewed through all the cushions at her back on the setee what we did not realise was he had an exit hole into the setee itself.
DH was away when it went into the setee and we finally got the rat out of the setee at about 2 a.m. only to find it had chewed all the strapping, it was alright but we had to buy a new setee.

I bred pedigree cats and would sometimes have 11 running about . We always treated any electrical cables with Bittet Apple from the pet superstore. A bit like the stuff mums stopped us biting our nails with.. better safe than sorry with lamps, tv and computer cables.

All pets are irreplaceable and tree lights can be bought again.

I remember one Christmas when my youngest was a baby, we were all sat watching tv when the lights went off. The light cable had been bit through....we later found out by a rat

We let our dear friends use our house in Devon when we went to Portugal years ago, we came home to find their Labrador had eaten the whole arm off our g-plan leather settee. They thought it was funny, we did not. We had to have the suite recovered and it cost us a fortune, they never offered to contribute and we did not want to claim on our insurance. It was the last time they used our home. Our own golden retriever puppy once ate all our toddler's food whilst our ds ate the dog dinner, the dog thought it was a great swap. I was not so happy.

Puppies always chew cables. Dangerous things need to be kept out of their reach just like you would with a toddler.

We had 2 springer spaniels . The first we got as a puppy and was well trained but the other was a rescue who was very timid . One morning I got ready for work and went to put the kettle on. I heard a clunk behind me and turned where DDog1 had brought me one of DD brand new shoes which was badly chewed. She kept looking back at the dining room where DDog2 was lay by the other shoe looking very guilty.
It was obviously DDog2 who had done the chewing and DDog1 was snitching on her. Daughter learned the hard way not to leave her best shoes near the dog after a drunken night out .

When we had a new puppy and a toddler we hung the Xmas tree from the ceiling. Looked a bit strange that year but solved the problem lolol

When our Doberman bitch was a youngster, we went out for an hour and a half's visit to nearby neighbours, and shut her in the kitchen with her bed and snacks to compensate her. Clearly an insufficient bribe, as we returned to find, in what was evidently a tantrum, she had stripped the plaster from the wall back to the bare brickwork, of an area approx a foot and a half wide, up to nearly waist height!
On another occasion, when she was in season and must have been broody, we returned to find she had decided our 3 seater settee was a good nest and had torn out the stuffing on all 3 seats.
Her predecessor, while a pup, managed to destroy his beanbag, and we returned to those little polystyrene balls everywhere, and for good measure he had deposited a little 'present' in amongst it all for us.

'Aww bless' - to use another thread under discussion on GN!

My nephew put up an xmas tree with blinking lights. The cat sits for long periods watching it and seems fascinated by the reflections in the baubles. His previous cat jumped into the tree when she was a kitten so they havnt had one for years.

We have three Goldies, two are still 'pups' (10 months) although already large dogs. Basically they eat everything including unmentionable stuff. If they are late being walked they rip up the garden. Don't know why I love them so much...

We had a pet rabbit that we used to let loose in the house, and it was only some time afterwards that my husband discovered he'd been chewing through the electrical cables at the back of TV and computer. Luckily the rabbit didn't electrocute himself. He did have a sad ending though, when a fox managed to unlatch the door on his hutch 😢. It was years ago but still very sad 😔

We also had a house rabbit who would always chew the landline wire.
At least your puppy was ok. I looked after a cat once and very sadly lost it. Was mortified. It sneaked out and despite many searches never was found. Worse as it was someone else’s pet.

stupid dd for not watching what the puppy was doing, it is a puppy they chew, i hope she took the poor little thing to a vet to be checked over, as for the lights....who gets upset about lights, they are now all reduced....christmas is over.
is this post real?

I have always been very fortunate, but then we had both dogs and cats / puppies and kittens in my childhood, and I am the elder daughter, so it was part of my upbringing that when there were kittens, puppies and children under five, one adult always either kept an eye on the youngsters, or on the Christmas tree.

My mother firmly believed that if you cannot hear where a kitten, puppy or todler is and what they are doing, then they are probably doing something they shouldn't, and immediate investigation is called for.

As a school-teacher I have found that precept very useful with children of all ages!

One year our Christmas tree capsized and landed gracefully on the sitting-room floor.

Believe it or not, nothing broke, and happily, our two young kittens were both with us in the kitchen, where they were being fed, as the rest of the family sat down for dinner, and we were three adults who all saw that the kittens were not responsible for the tree collapsing in a faint.

We put it up again and added a couple of guy ropes for safety's sake.

Goodness! Poor puppy! Yes, like toddlers, take nothing for granted with any pup or really any “strange” dog staying in your home which doesn’t belong to anyone living in said home! Glad all turned out ok in the end, as a lifelong dog owner I wouldn’t have cared less about the tree lights!

One of our puppies ate my husband’s shoe. Quite normal you think but he was wearing it and didn’t notice. You just can’t train some people 😀

Totally agree. Glad puppy is ok. Lights can be replaced! She should have shut pup in a 'safe' are a crate.

Meant safe place or a crate.....

We had a dwarf rabbit, taken in from the local school, and he quickly established himself as the senior pet. My tumble dryer refused to work, and after messing about for ages with fuses and sockets, we discovered that he had somehow got behind it and chewed the cable in half almost under the machine, so to anyone looking from the front, the dryer didn't show any sign of damage.

I've been very fortunate none of our Border Collies have been chewers except kira who liked a nice shoe! I did know a hamster that got out and chewed through the central heating wiring now that was expensive to fix.