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No, this isn’t about Donkey Kong or the movie, King Kong. Instead, this is about a wonderful new invention to help dogs with chewing problems, which is also called a Kong. You may have seen them in pet stores or at supermarkets, looking like an overstuffed, round Michelin man, advertised as a way to help dogs with destructive chewing problems. It turns out, Angus has had this problem and despite our best efforts to curb it, he keeps finding new things to chew on around the apartment. He first chewed up one of my old bathroom passes from school, a paper-mache dinosaur covered in New Yorker covers. The point of no return was when I got out of the shower one morning before work and found our incense holder, a star-shaped piece of wood with circular dots for incense sticks to protrude from, chewed along one of its five corners. He also chewed up (and eventually, painfully, pooped out) five whole tootsie pops from my backpack while I was at the gym this past week. I was very frustrated when I found this out, but thankfully, Angus is a good boy and I can never stay mad at him for long. However, this was still an issue that Alex and I knew we had to resolve soon, as it was unsustainable for both of us to have a dog chewing up our whole apartment while we were away. Neither of us were able to stay behind to keep a close eye on him, and judging by his actions while I was at the gym and in the shower, no time away is too short for him to find new things to chew on.

The idea behind the Kong is simple: it occupies a dog’s time with tasty treats inside a tricky, tough-to-open rubber toy. Instead of going for the wooden incense holder, which tastes nothing like chicken at all, why not go for the frozen peanut butter inside the Kong? That’s the rationale supporting this, and so far, it’s worked well for us. No problems yet. Fingers crossed!