Before you start getting concerned, there’s nothing wrong with Ayla. Well, I guess that might be a matter of opinion but physically there is nothing wrong with her 😉

We finally decided to take advantage of our new sewing machine yesterday and repaired the fantastic retractable leash that we bought in March. It lasted all of two weeks (maybe even less) and she had nearly chewed through the line and we could no longer use it. Sometimes when she is walking down the street with us, she will take the leash in her mouth and chew on it a bit. Unfortunately the line which retracts into this leash wasn’t as thick as it probably should have been so it took her no time at all to get through it. We couldn’t bear the thought of just trashing it so we’ve been holding on to it, thinking that we would eventually be able to repair it somehow. And that day has finally come. We just cut off the portion of the leash she had chewed through and doubled up the line over a much longer portion so she will hopefully chew on the double layer instead of a single one now. Naturally we’d like her to stop chewing it altogether but that doesn’t seem too likely at this stage. She loves hot sauce and just about everything else so it’s pretty hard to find something to stop her chewing interests.

We’ve used the leash now on two walks since we’ve repaired it and I definitely remember why we purchased it. It makes the walks so much more enjoyable for all of us when Ayla has about 20 feet (6 meters) of space to roam versus 5 feet with her usual leash. She’s a popular dog and gets tons of pee-mails to read along the way so the constant stopping can be a bit of a pain. But at least with a long leash we can keep on going and just make sure she comes along before we run out of leash.

While we were in the flow of repairing Ayla’s stuff, I pulled out her sack of injured stuffies. There were already 5 patients which needed attention, and the kangaroo was really on his last leg. I decided to give everyone a bath in the washing machine before we started working on them because they were not smelling too pleasant. But the gashes in kangaroo were a bit deeper than I realized and he ended up losing most of his stuffing in the washing machine. As you can see, it was a bit of a blood bath…ok, well, a cotton bath but you get the idea.

Both cow stuffies went in for surgery. They are sadly both mute now since Ayla crushed their voice boxes a while back. She just doesn’t even notice her own jaw strength I guess….or perhaps she never liked the mooing to begin with. 😉 After she got their voice boxes out, she started eating the older cows stomach which you can see being repaired here.

Fuzzy ball was also in the ICU for a while. His skin is not all that thick despite the long fur and he seems to tear pretty easily. He lost his quacker at some point before he was put into the hospital so he is now silent also. I tell you, it’s been a rough year for all toys that make noise.

Ayla sat in the living room the entire time like a nervous mother waiting to receive news about her children. She nearly got poked in the nose a few times with our needles as she came over to inspect progress. But we assured her that we knew what we were doing and that her toys would be in recovery soon where she could play with them again.

She was very excited to see them all, though. Some toys had been missing for months and she probably thought we’d thrown them away. Here she is giving kangaroo some love.

Unfortunately he has since been retired because Ayla insisted on eating his ears off. And when she starts eating the toys, that’s the end of them. We can’t have her eating stuff like that because you just never know how it’s going to end up coming out of her system. If it gets stuck in the intestines they you really have problems. But she seems to have vomited most of it up and left us a surprise this morning outside. Apparently it wasn’t tasty enough to eat a second time.