Eeewwww!

Last night my wife and I were sitting down playing a game and just enjoying some quality time together once the kids were asleep. To keep Inara and Guinevere quiet (as they were extremely distracting with their play), we gave them each a rawhide strip. Both dogs love these, and it was a great way to keep them occupied. Guinevere is pretty quick to go through one, but Inara really takes her time. She spent a good couple of hours chewing on hers, until it was a soft, extremely slimey consistency. Perfect for a dog, but not so much fun for a person.

It became more fun when she jumped up on the couch with the gooey rawhide in her mouth, and jumped right onto my wife. Despite being a vet's wife, she doesn't have a high tolerance for these sorts of things, and was freaking out about it almost touching her. She also was getting nauseous at the thought of the oozing, slimey surface. Inara chewed on it for a while, before she got shooed off the couch. Not too long after, she jumped back up, turned around, and lovingly faced my wife with the well-chewed rawhide dangling from her mouth. My wife used a catalog to scoop it up and throw it to the floor, follwed quickly by the puppy.

It's interesting how we have different perceptions of what is "good" than our pets do. Many dogs will eat feces, rummage through garbage, sniff each other's rears, lick their own genitals, and other things that we see and go "eewww!" While I agree that many of these things are disgusting, and we shouldn't be ashamed of our human standards, we also need to understand that to a dog these things are perfectly normal and even fun or delicious. We shouldn't get mad at them for exhibiting a natural and rewarding behavior.

However, I think my wife will think twice before letting Inara have a rawhide when we're around her. :)