The Joy of Squeakers

In all the years Kino has been with me, the one thing that has remained constant is the complete and utter joy he gets from the sound of a toy making a squeak. To be honest, it brings me joy too - to see him so happy makes my heart feel happy too.  I can't help but laugh when I see him marching around the family room with a squeak toy in his mouth, as each step produces another sound from the chomp of his jaw.

Of course, after a while, most of the toys stop making noise . . . and Kino's level of joy diminishes a bit. One night I found him searching through his toy basket, biting each toy until he found one that would make the desired sound and leaving a big pile of "quiet" toys outside of the basket . . . and I got an idea . . . maybe it was time for his toys to have "squeaker replacement surgery!"

I got on line and researched the little noise makers, reading reviews and trying to determine which ones might be the most durable.  When the package arrived, I determined who would get the first transplant surgeries and got to work.

I am not much of a seamstress but I gave it my best effort. Since the weather was nice, I parked myself in a lawn chair outside with all the necessary "instruments" and a few hours later, all the "surgeries" were complete.

Kino was over the moon!  He spent the next several hours biting each one, back and forth, back and forth until all the toys were sopping wet from slobber.  Later that night, I got him to chase the ball for a bit but shortly after we started, he stopped mid-run . . . stood there for a minute . . . then ran back over to the pile of stuffed toys.  It was like his brain said to him "But wait, we have new squeakers in the stuffed toys!"

Seeing how happy the rejuvenated toys made Kino, the next week, I decided to get even more adventurous and re-stuff the toys that he had inherited from Lucky.  Since she unstuffed most of her stuffed toys, there were a lot of floppy toy carcasses in the bottom of the toy basket that I just hadn't had the heart to part with in the nearly ten years she has been gone.  My trip to the craft store for just the right stuffing was followed by several more hours of "surgery" - and since I was putting in such a big effort, I decided to put more than one squeaker into each of the re-stuffed toys so that if one of the squeakers gave out, at least the toy would still make noise.

Kino almost seemed overwhelmed when I presented all the toys to him after they came out of "post-op." It was as if he was thinking "How could one dog be so lucky?" and for a while, he just laid there and stared at all the "refreshed" toys. I wondered if maybe he was hesitant because they were Lucky's toys but eventually, I heard the sound I had been waiting for - a cacophony of squeaking coming from the family room.

For the time being, Kino has a whole lot of squeaking toys to bring him joy!  And as always, his joy brings me joy!  I would say our project was successful!!