So, tell me what random things your crazy labrador has eaten....

[georgimama]

we were awoken by the sound of labrador knocking a ovenproof china dish off the side this morning. I made toad in the hole last night, and bits of batter were crusted on. I meant to soak it but forget and it had spent the night on the drainer .

About 5am the temptation obviously overcame our lab who knocked it onto the floor. It shattered, but that didn't stop him eating the batter (and as far as we can tell, some fragments of the dish ) despite the fact he was cutting his mouth.

(He is absolutely fine before anyone urges me to take him to the vet - the cuts were very trivial and stopped bleeding within minutes.)

I got a pair of lab puppies a few years ago, so any inkling toward naughtiness/chewing on the part of one of them was encouraged by the other.

One of them ate a sofa over a period of weeks - first the cover off one arm, then the rest of the cover, then the white cotton material underneath, the foam under that, then the wooden frame. The absolute worst bit of this was that all the material was eaten in strips, and these got stuck inside them, and so we had to pull out the strips out of the other end as they got stuck mid-turdage.

They both ate the original Victorian skirting boards, door frames and spindles on the bannisters.

Four rush-matting bottomed chairs didn't last too long either. We spent 18 months sitting on outdoor teak chairs inside as we couldn't face buying more nice chairs if they were going to be destroyed.

I have to say that the worst day ever was when I forgot to shut them in the kitchen before going out for a couple of hours. When DH came back he thought we'd been burgled - coal all over the hall, all house plants upended and shredded, all bins emptied and contents shredded, laundry basket full of clean ironing shredded/covered in coal.

I do wish I'd known about dog crates then.

When I was a kid my Dads labrador found, caught and ate 6 rats, whole and alive in 60 seconds. We could see them wriggling in his stomach.

The thing is he was the perfect gundog that could 'mark' an injured pheasant and then come back two hours later, find it and carry it still alive in his jaws and place it gently in my Dads hand.

As a puppy he could retrive a hens egg rolled along the lawn and then carry it gently without breaking it and place it in your hand and then sit quietly waiting for it to broken for him to eat.

First edition Katherine Mansfields ;

Several, whole, Christmas cakes, left out to cool with the door left open during a weak moment;

a complete, large tub of some reconstituted diet-food cabbage soup type stuff I had;

raw strings of sausages stolen from random blokes in the park (hugely embarrassing);

picnickers' picnics, also in said park;

plus the regulation chair legs, candles, plastic bowls and all that normal stuff.

I was frantically waved down by my destraught (terrified of dogs neighbour) a couple of years a go. Her neighbour (luckily a friend of mine), left their lab in the kitchen all day with the backdoor open. During the afternoon he broke out of the kitchen into the rest of the house and shredded the post, including brand new contact lenses and solution, shredded a whole 12 pack of toilet paper, and started to bring stashed toys from their spare room outside to demolish them in the fresh air of the garden.

I climbed over the fence leaving DS with terrified neighbour and proceded to clean up the worst of it. 3 bin bags full. I had to leave the post shredded on the kitchen side, then took the rascal home with me lest he do more damage.

My own little angel has:
eaten a whole pack of vitamins, that resulted in a vet trip and some bicarb or something shooting out of his bottom scorching the grass for a week.

ripped the telephone wire through the hall wall and nibbled the plasterboard to get to it

pulled out and smashed/and consumed an entire huge bottle of special ale that my dad bought for DH. There was broken glass and blood everywhere, but not a drop of beer. Took him a while to sleep that off!

The worst is eating a pair of tights. I was watching him straining round the garden one day and thought what is that hanging out of his bottom? Queue curious me going out to investigate and the horrific realisation dawning on me that I had to "assist". No washing up gloves, I had to don tesco bags and pull. Well they stretched for ever...absolutely disgusting and it makes me just thinking about it now!!

He also ran over to a group of young (I presume muslim men) who were happily enjoying a picnic and a chat in the park. Rampaged through their picnic and scoffed everything in sight. Those poor chaps, they looked like they were jumping out of boiling hot water!

He's a lot calmer now, qquite old, but still likes to stuff his nose into ladies crotches at the first opportunity. Only a few though!

My brand new ballet shoes.

All the family's easter eggs.

A frozen dog cronk.

oh where to start...large lumps of plaster out of the wall, several skirting boards, stair carpet.
lumps of coal, a fridge magnet, tinfoil, babywipes (used and otherwise), and a lot of snails.
several components of ds's trainset, a cheque book, (much sniggering from the bank when i rang to get it replaced), an entire bottle of human vitamins, several of dh's shoes and a cordless phone (retrieved heavily chewed before it was swallowed).
and a great deal of dogfood, the afternoon that i turned my back for five minutes and ds thoughtfully got out the sack of dog biscuits from under the sink.
now he's a bit older he eats less but hoards more - he takes things to his bed and hides them jealously like trophies under his smelly blanket, then gives them to visitors. will still make an exception though for empty plastic water bottles, which he adores.

one that my parents used to look after for family friends

an entire pack of human laxatives including all packaging "he went to the loo very quickly the next day"

A friend's lab when he was a child regularly had socks hanging out of its bum.

Fifteen metres of fishing line, complete with fly (whic he had retrieved from a bin).

Customer's sandwiches - then went back 10 minutes later and drunk his coffee.

Bubble wrap, and literally hundreds of plastic caps used to seal the ends of tubes.

pmsl at some of these. the eat-everything gene seems somehow to have by-passed our lab. dh's old one ate 2lb of lard once. apparently the smells he was making were so bad he had to be banished to teh garden. he also ate a bag of sugar. his prize moment was eating dh's mum's cancer drugs.

having said that the eat-everything gene by-passed ours, he does have one rather delightful habit (stick your fingers in your ears if you're squeamish). he, erm, clears out the cat's litter box. (and dd wonders why I yell at her if she lets him lick her face )

OK, for starters, when she was a pup, we had the nerve to leave her in the house having (we thought) dog proofed it...pup got into a closed box containing real nappies and associated supplies - new tube of bum cream, full packet of cotton wool balls, paper nappy liners etc etc - not only was there the mess, but some of it came back up partly digested, sorry if TMI ;
the contents of my sewing basket;
various pieces of lego;
the red wax wrappers of babybels;
any food stuff she can get her paws on,including the wrapper/container;
paper tissues - she is addicted to paper tissues and shreds them and eats them. We've had to remove all paper bins up a level, not from the kids but for the flippin' hound....

Finona that reminds me of the countless times my mums terriers upended sitting room bins for orange peel or sweetie wrappers and frequently got sewing needles stuck in their tongues!