Feeding & Nutrition

I bought rabbit ears on a whim after the breeder mentioned them, and I am now a person who receives dried animal parts in the mail, which is not the life I pictured. They arrived in a plain bag, a bit dusty, smelling of nothing much, and the puppy lost his mind in a way he has never lost it for a toy.

He is a chewer. Not the cute kind. The kind who took the corner off the skirting in the hall before we had owned him a fortnight. I had tried the nylon bones, the rope, the frozen flannel, all of it ignored in favour of the architecture. The rabbit ear changed that in about four seconds. He grabbed it, backed into his bed, and chewed like it owed him money.

The appeal, the breeder said, is that it is a genuine chew with a bit of fur and cartilage, and it keeps a puppy busy without splintering like a cooked bone or staining the carpet like a raw hide. I do not know the science. I know the hall skirting is still in one piece three weeks later, and that feels like proof enough for me.

He gets one after his lunch, when the zoomies usually hit and the furniture is at risk. It lasts maybe twenty minutes, which in puppy time is an afternoon. He lies there, growling softly at nobody, and the house goes quiet in the way it only does when a small creature is fully occupied. I use those twenty minutes to drink tea that has gone cold, which is the only kind I get.

There is a line with chews, and I learned it the hard way with the rawhide. That stuff turned his stool pale and his stomach sour, and the vet rolled her eyes in the kind way that means I should have known. Rabbit ears are plain. One ingredient. The dog. He does not need a list of additives to be happy. He needs something to destroy that is not mine.

I keep a jar of them by the door now, next to the leads. Guests find it odd. My sister asked if they were for a stew. They are not. They are for the dog who would otherwise be eating the house, and I will take a dusty bag of ears over a joiner's bill any day of the week. The puppy agrees. He sits by the jar and hopes, which is the closest he comes to manners.

Will it fix everything? No. He is still a puppy and puppies are chaos with paws. But the skirting is intact, the chairs are safe, and the only thing with bite marks on it is something I paid ninety pence for and would happily replace. That is a win I can see, right there on the floor, in the shape of a chewed ear and a quiet dog.

I mentioned them to the trainer and she nodded, said they are the one chew she recommends without caveat, because they are plain and they last and they do not stain, and a puppy with a plain long chew is a puppy not eating the house. She said the mistake owners make is buying the colourful ones, the ones with dye and glue, because they look like a product. The dog does not want a product. The dog wants a thing to destroy. The rabbit ear is that thing, minus the nonsense.

The bag lasts ages, which surprised me, because the puppy goes through toys like a document shredder and I expected the ears to vanish in a day. They do not. One a day, sometimes one every other day when he is busy with something else, and the bag sits in the jar by the door like a small savings account of good behaviour. When the zoomies hit I reach in, he sits, the house is safe for twenty minutes, and I remember why I bothered ordering the dusty bag at all.

He is growing out of the worst of it, I think. The chewing is slowing, the ears last longer, the skirting has had a quiet fortnight. But I will keep the jar full anyway, because the puppy phase does not end with a bell, it just eases, and on the days it does not ease, the ear is there. A plain, dusty, slightly odd thing that costs almost nothing and buys back the only resource this house runs out of, which is peace, the kind you get when a small chaos is busy and the floor is still ours.

The breeder texted to ask if they were helping and I sent her a photo of the intact skirting, which she sent back with a laughing emoji, and I realised I had become the person who texts about mouldings like they are a victory, which they are, in this house. The puppy will chew something again, he is a puppy, but the ears bought us a calm fortnight and a habit of settling that outlasts the chew itself. I reorder before the jar empties now, because running out is the one day the furniture is not safe, and I have learned not to tempt the architecture.