Meet Bella and her new best friend

I thought I’d introduce everyone to my best friend and studio companion. This is Bella.Don’t let that sweet face fool you for one minute.  She can easily leave a path of destruction in her wake, especially when her tail of destruction gets into full swing.  The real damage is inflicted on a regular basis to her poor toys.  For the longest time I resisted getting anything other than rubber and hard plastic toys but I caved one day and bought her a fuzzy stuffed lamb with a squeaker.

It was love at first sight.  She absolutely adored her new fuzzy toy and promptly began carting it all around the house with her.  That was until the carnage began less than 48 hours later.  The poor little sheep just couldn’t stand up to her razor sharp teeth and soon the house was covered in bits of stuffing.  As I would pick up the small parts of the remains she would protect the larger remnant from me so it wouldn’t be thrown away too.

I knew the day was coming when there would be but a shred left and the final tossing would have to happen so I turned to my fellow ArtFire sellers in an attempt to find a replacement that just might hold up to Princess Destructo.  We decided to try out one of the handmade dog toys from Critter Crafts and purchased Scrappy Cat.  The toy is made of two layers of fabric with the inner layer being made from canvas to give it added strength.

Click on picture to go to product page

When Scrappy Cat arrived Bella looked at indifferently at first until my 9 year old son gave it the first squeeze.  It was love at first squeak.  She immediately pulled her new toy from my son’s hands and gave it the first workout.

As you can see she gave it a hardy workout.  She seemed to take some offense to the rope coming out of the front of Scrappy Cat and spent the first evening hard at work until she removed it.  It is now 2 days shy of 2 weeks since she received her new toy and that is the only damage that has been inflicted.

This is her absolute favorite toy and it goes everywhere with her except outside because we don’t allow that (she’s primarily an inside dog anyway).  So she takes it all the way to the door and drops it right next to the door.  As soon as she comes back in she immediately grabs it and takes it back into the living room with her.

Today my husband spotted one of the Hartz Tuff Stuff dog toys made from ultra-durable ballistic nylon while we were shopping so we thought we’d try one of those out.  It’s been 2 hours and Mr. Duck’s wing is shredded.  Needless to say we’ll be returning to Critter Crafts for our next soft toy purchase.  I already have my eye on this one

Click on picture to go to product page

I can not thank Critter Crafts enough for designing such a well made product that makes both Bella and I very happy.  The arrival of Scrappy Cat allowed me to finally get that 2″ piece of sheep in the trash where it belonged.