Blind Goldie loves soft squeaky toys … but really only the squeaker inside them. She can smell a soft toy no matter where we try to hide it, but if it turns out not to have a squeaker in it, she’ll the drop the toy in a second and wander off. No squeaker, no fun.
Her only goal is to rip the squeaker out, chew on it for a few minutes, and then come to us looking for a new toy. She has no interest in the toy itself. Occasionally Goldie’s approach is to shred the entire toy, scattering the stuffing everywhere, and then happily crunch the squeaker while she lies amidst the fluffy ruins of the dead toy. The squeaker is like a trophy of some sort. (She never eats it, by the way … just chews on it until it’s punctured so it can’t make any sound, then she abandons it.)
But Goldie’s more common approach is what we call ‘heart surgery.’ She chews a very small, precise hole in the toy, carefully extracts the heart — i.e., the squeaker — and then leaves the toy behind intact. To show you what this looks like, this afternoon Alayne and I put Goldie on a chair next to one of her recent successful "heart operations." Notice that little hole in the chest of the toy … it’s exactly the size the squeaker was.
The real beauty of this is, we still have a toy left to give the other dogs!
(Click on photo for larger image.)
Rolling Dog Farm Blog 
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