The eve of pup-struction.

The puppy, Nipper, is nine months old and capable of destroying anything.

I'm serious. I once complained about his big brother, Tralfaz, being Death, Destroyer of Toys, but he was not in Nipper's class. I suspect that just being an outsize giant dog caused some of Tralfaz's destruction; he did not know his own strength. These days he's pretty mellow with objects and sort of totally past the whole toy thing, you know. (Except when he isn't.)

Nipper gets hold of something, toy or not, and he is on a mission.

We have to stay one step ahead of him when he's on the loose, closing doors to rooms he shouldn't go in, keeping power cords from dangling off the counter. He's gotten taller, so his range keeps improving. The only time we can trust him is at night, in the crate, and even then we think he might rip something up if he wasn't so tired. During the day he spends a lot of time in a pen, because he sleeps a lot and won't sleep unless he has at least semi-enclosure, and so that we can turn our backs on him for a second.

This is not a neglected dog, bored and resentful. He just likes to rip stuff up. See the following:

Exhibit A: Frisbee #1, under 10 minutes

Exhibit B: Frisbee #2, in the time it took
me to empty the dishwasher (it is not a
large dishwasher)

Exhibit C: Chewy football toy, less than 20 minutes

The last one sent us in a brief panic, because he swallowed most of that plastic. We called the vet, who told us to let him know if he had any gastrointestinal symptoms or otherwise acted ill, but Nipper never did. I guess it passed on through, but given the football's color it was, uh, hard to tell.

For the record, Tralfaz had a football just like that before it got lost in the woods, and even during his own destructo period he never broke the ball. Nipper had been pulling on the rope part, but wasn't swallowing bits of rope, so we said fine, let him chew on it a little bit. The moment our backs were turned he set to destroying and eating the football.

This kid is like a toddler, if a toddler had 70 pounds of muscle and could run 15 miles per hour.

My wife did some research and it does seem like Goldens are particularly fond of annihilating objects at this age. I immediately got to wondering why Stan Lee didn't (to my knowledge) make a monster puppy as one of the many Marvel Comics monsters over the years, guys like Mummex and Fin Fang Foom and Groot (who started out as a monster). Yeah, there's Lockjaw, but he's an alien and he's not a baby.

I was thinking, in true Jack Kirby fashion, of a giant Golden Retriever puppy; can you see the cover?

He'd chew apart Avengers Mansion just for fun.