LOL, Golden Retrievers are supposed to be fairly smart dogs but I often wonder about ours. I've had a couple of Vets tell me that this particular breed likes to eat unusual stuff. One of ours is almost 12 years old and he still yanks the bark off of a palm tree and lays down and munches on it in the backyard and he also likes to eat the bark off of oak trees! I have to be really careful to keep Kleenex and Paper Towels out of reach because he always wants to eat them! When this particular dog was a young pup we would crate him when we left the house and once I felt bad about leaving him in the crate with the hard bottom so we bought a gel filled crate mat thinking he would be more comfortable. That night we were going to a college basketball game so we positioned the crate to face the laundry room so that when we came home he'd see us as we came into the house from the garage. We came home about two hours later and he was standing in his crate wagging his tail, extremely happy to see us but I soon freaked out because there were bits of blue gel everywhere! It was all over the floor and all over the dog and even on his tongue and hanging out of his mouth! He'd apparently ignored his other toys and had a party with that gel mat! We took him to the Vet first thing the next morning to be checked out and thankfully he was okay. Our other Golden is almost 9 and we can't have any of the fabric toys in the house with him (even the type with no stuffing) because he eats the fabric! We have tennis balls that we throw for the dogs in the yard but after a few minutes, they don't want to bring them back, they only want to lay down and eat the felt. 🐕
