Anytime a package comes, Tigger now thinks it is for her.

She will hear the mailman, UPS man or FedEx man knock on the door and she immediately sits until I bring the package inside. Each package has to get sniffed by Tigger before I am allowed to open it.

Once Tigger realizes it’s not a dog toy, she walks away to either curl up on the couch or on the bed.

Nate and I have tried two different subscription boxes to see which toys fit her best — Super Chewer by Bark and Bullymake.

We first tried Bullymake and absolutely loved the treat dispensing toys it came with as it allowed us to fill it with dog food so it would be a mind game for Tigger and force her to eat slower.

Besides those, she wasn’t a big fan of the actual toys it came with. They were made of solid nylon and didn’t have much texture on them.

After watching her play with them for a few minutes and then go back to her old toys, I decided to do more research on dog toys for breeds similar to hers.

There came along Bark. They have multiple different brands under their umbrella including Bright (dental), Box (normal plush), Eats (dog treats) and Super Chewer.

Those Super Chewer toys have been her favorite thing since the first one came. She still drags around her blankets or the outer shell of her destroyed Koala bear stuffed animal, but Tigger goes straight for those Super Chewers when she wants to play.

Since the first box came, she has gotten her second box along with a few free toys and a few replacements. I had also ordered just a couple of them from their store to test them out before doing an actual subscription. Anytime Bark sends an order from their store or a replacement/free toy, they all get shipped in a blue shipping bag.

Tigger now recognizes this bag, which creates problems.

On Sunday, FedEx delivered her free toy. On accident, FedEx had delivered our neighbor’s Chewy box to us instead of the Bark bag — he just saw that it was a dog company and thought it was for us.

Tigger stood there barking and wondering why I wasn’t bringing the package inside and instead flagged the FedEx truck down before he drove away. Once she saw him carrying a Bark bag, she ran right to her bed on the living room floor (also a freebie from Bark) and sat there until I walked over with it.

Tigger then started jumping on me and I made her sit and lay down until opening the bag up since she previously wouldn’t stop barking at FedEx. After she decided to behave again, I opened the bag up and she followed me, with her tail wagging, over to the scissors and the trash can so I could cut off and throw the tag away.

I gave it to her and she ran right back to lay down on her memory foam dog bed to try and rip it apart. I could see her thinking and being very confused as to why she wasn’t able to just rip the plush toy apart.

Bark had sent her one of their “most durable plush” toys which has two layers of fabric and reinforced stitching so that it’s harder for dogs to rip apart.

Tigger will now also be getting one of those each month as they have very minimal fluff and she still hasn’t torn it apart.
Besides the blue Bark bags, she also thinks that any brown package that comes in the mail is hers.

Her free bed came in a brown box and they also sent a free plush toy with it so Tigger thinks that every box has a toy or a bed.

The free toy that came with it looked like a plush tennis ball, which also led to confusion. We only let her play with tennis balls outside, unless she sneaks it inside before we can grab it from her, as she will shred them to pieces.

Tigger knows that playing with tennis balls outside is for fetch, not for destroying.

Well, Tigger didn’t understand why this tennis ball-looking toy was squishy and why I was letting her play with it inside. She finally realized it was a plush toy… No more than two minutes later it was obliterated. There was a pile of fluff in front of her and she just sat there holding the outer shell in her mouth.

Some of the Super Chewer toys come with plush outer shells with a nylon or rubber toy underneath. Tigger will rip the plush off of it and play with that for hours. She will carry it around the house with her or sleep on her bed with it.

She is quite strange when it comes to toys — Tigger will try to eat the Super Chewer toys while destroying the plush ones and then playing with the fluff or outer shell, but she will never play with a plush toy as a whole.

When I told customer service at Bark that she chewed through a solid nylon toy, they told me how impressed they were with her. Tigger’s two replacement toys should be here next week and maybe this time she will let me get the package inside before she tries to get it out of my hands.

Caitie Ihrig