raccoons, skunk, and Sally.

The very first toy we bought Sally (our cat dachsund/chihuaha? mix puppy was a raccoon that was stuffed with a water bottle. She got rid of the water bottle and just carried the raccoon around until she figured out how to rip off parts of its head.  David and I figured out that she liked the raccoon because of the contrasting stripes, ... we bought her a squeaker mat (looks like a tic tac toe board) raccoon at Walgreens, which she liked almost as the first "Raccoon."  We wanted to find her another squeaker mat for when she chewed out the squeakers (she's made good progress so far!), but all we could find was a Skunk. ... skunks have stripes, raccoons have stripes, so  possibly this would work as well.

We let her have both the old raccoon, the new raccoon (we called both of these creatures "raccoon" to make things [potentially] easier for Sally, and now "skunk."    She loved them hard, and every time she came inside she had to dash to her pet taxi and take out raccoon, raccoon, and skunk. She would then either kill them or make them "mind" with a vigorous shaking-down.

We were at a store and saw another raccon, not preflattened or squished like the two prior raccoons but a more realistic one, so we bought it to supplement her diet...

...she likes to leave that one to fend for itself  ...still... and would much rather chew holes in her tic-tac-toed, squeakable, mostly dead friends Raccoon and Skunk.   The most realistic toy she has, therefore, is still alive. 

and she has an aversion to the pet cologne we bought so she would smell good, but we discovered that if we hose her down while she is outside (it's not torture if it's over 80 degrees everyday, is it?) she can forego the cologne... for a little while. 

a raccoon at Bill Baggs Park ... pre-Sally... 

us at Bill Baggs, also pre-Sally
(August 2011)