A guest blog… (Encore)

My human calls me a “chewer,” like it’s a bad thing. Sheesh. If only he knew my family history, but of course he doesn’t ’cause we adopted each other at the local pound. Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful. I have a wonderful life, but I also have a proud heritage. I come from a long, long line of chewers.

I may go through a sock or two, or an occasional sweatshirt, and I once consumed a pin cushion–with pins–but I’m nothin’ compared to my uncle Tank. I’m told he ate a ’73 Chevy Impala. But I’m sure that’s an exaggeration. It was prob’ly just a Volkswagen.

So, yeah. I chew stuff. It comes naturally, and it takes many forms. And when I started working on this little itch I had on my back leg, it shouldn’t have become a big deal.

Usually an itch goes away after a little tooth work. This one didn’t. It required some serious mastication. My human fussed at me about it, and every time he saw me workin’ on it, he yelled at me to stop.

Silly human. I just went into another room and chowed down. In no time I had created a spot the size of my paw that oozed pink and raw. Oh, what a proud moment–it wouldn’t take long to gnaw my whole leg off! (And they said Tank was a legend. Ha!)

Just when it got good, my human intervened. He put stinky stuff on the spot, and I don’t mean the good stinky stuff. Then he wrapped it with cloth strips. Cloth! Like he forgot about the socks and sweatshirts.

Well, those cloth strips became appetizers. I couldn’t get enough of the main course: my leg.

That’s when the real challenge began. He took me to the vet, and she knocked me out. Makes me shiver just thinkin’ about it. The vet has the stinkiest stuff of all, and her cloth strips are much tougher. To top it off, they wrapped my head in an enormous sheet of gray plastic.

When I woke up, I saw the world from inside a megaphone. I couldn’t see my body. Worse still, I couldn’t reach my leg.

It was war!

Sadly, it took me a week to devise a strategy: if chewing got me here, it might get me out, too. Except, the edges of the plastic cone remained out of range, but not for doorways, furniture and the water dish. Oh, no. I turned into a front end loader.

At the end of Week Two I realized I could bend an edge of the cone against a wall and by working diligently, I could get my teeth on it.

And chew!

By the end of Week Three, I had worked my way completely around the outside edge. Now I looked at the world from inside a colander!

Then my human covered my painstakingly arranged bite-marks with duct tape. How was I supposed to compete with Home Depot? But I did. I kept chewing.

And chewing.

Through layers of new tape and old. By the end of Week Four, I was nearly free!

Which is when my human removed the remains of my plastic prison and told me to leave my leg alone.

But, my leg was fine. Good as new!

I swear, I’ll never understand people.

My name is Shasta, and I approve this message.