The Tales of Lilly, The Mud Life Dog
Trouble & Squeak
by Karen Lee Turner
Quite a while ago I told you about Lilly's love for squeaky balls, and I've also mentioned her favourite toy, a quacking duck from Home Bargains, both of which are not expensive, so when the squeaking and quacking dies it hasn't been costly to replace them. However I am conscious that keeping replacing them is not really great for the environment, so I decided that although nothing could be done to save the balls, I could use my making and mending talents to repair the ducks. We had ended up with a number of mute ducks, in various colours, and in various states of mangling. She always plays with them up until she manages to puncture the plastic bag that was the air bladder, or until we take them off her when she rips a hole and starts pulling out the wadding innards - an exploded duck in the lounge is a sight to behold! It wasn't a case of just replacing the bag, as the quacker works in a similar set up to a bagpipe - it has to be capable of drawing in
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air by itself before Lilly's jaws clamp and squeeze the air back out, so I set on a mission to find replacements. I headed to Amazon, as you can pretty much find anything on there, but these little air-quackers proved elusive, so I started looking for alternatives. Now squeakers are in plentiful supply on the aforementioned shopping site - big ones, little ones and everything in between. There are ones for human toys, ones for dog toys, and all have reviews, so I spent time reading reviews telling me which was which, and how well they could stand up to a bit of doggy munching. It's amazing how much time you can lose to reading how Rover only took 2 minutes 23 seconds to demolish his toy, or how unimpressed Luna was because her new squeaky toy wasn't in the same decibel range as her last one. Honestly, my will to live was ebbing away.