You’re Back! Here’s a Stuffed Animal Carcass

BRACE YOURSELF! should be a warning sign on our front door.

Jasper loves to greet people. Whenever someone comes in, he checks out who it is, then scrambles to his toy box and brings something back, his behind wagging so much it could churn butter.

We taught him not to jump up on people, so instead he does these little hops on his front legs. He looks like Peter dancing to hip-hop.

He doesn’t want you to take the toy from him; he just wants you to see it. And if we tell him, “Get another one,” he’ll return to the box and stuff another toy or two in his mouth. We praise him, his tail wags even more. His record was five toys at once—quite a mouthful.

Like other dogs, Jasper doesn’t have a keen sense of time. We get this kind of greeting if we’ve been away for a week, popped out to the grocery store, or taken out the trash. No matter what, Jasper greets us like we’re just back from the front. (Which, working in cable news in New York City, I often feel that I am.)

Jasper greets me with more than one toy in his mouth. His record is five (of course).

Being greeted by Jasper, and Henry before him, is a rush for me. Like a runner’s high without the workout. It means I’m always met with warmth and affection—and it helps make our house such a welcoming home.

From the start, Jasper loved his toys and his bed. It looked like he would make up games to play by himself, and he’d make all kinds of groaning and howling noises, just for the fun of it. To this day when we make him go to his bed while we eat dinner, he will put on one of these displays—turning upside down, and having some sort of play fight with a ghost, something he’s done since his first days in Manhattan. It never fails to crack us up—which is probably why he does it. Those moments take the sting out of any work day.

Jasper has a gigantic basket of toys. Many of them now are just carcasses of stuffed animals. Toys I can see from where I’m writing: snake, lobster, dinosaur, elephant, circus elephant, duck, bear, killer whale, sock monkey (a favorite), Frisbee, red panda, and a hippie man. Hippie man is dressed in a tie-dye T-shirt and has a long beard and a peace symbol necklace. Jasper ripped off his arms. Peter says, “Don’t worry, Jasper. He’s armless.” I laugh every time.

One of the reasons Jasper rips apart his toys is that he’s trying to get the squeak out. I’ve watched him with new toys and admire how he can immediately find the weak stitching and start pulling it apart. Once he gets the plastic squeaker out of the toy, he ejects it onto the floor. Another one bites the dust.

We have a friend that patches up all of his dog’s ripped-up toys, painstakingly sewing them on weekends. That would never work at our house. If I tried to sew Jasper’s toys, I wouldn’t have time for anything else. I’m just glad he doesn’t do that to the couch. Or one of our guests.

Every few weeks I think that I need to pare down his toys. I wait until he’s out with Peter and then I start going through the box. Every toy brings back a memory. I remember if the toy was a gift, like his Tigger that my sister, Angie, got him when he was just a young puppy. I can’t throw that out. I pick up others, some now just the hides of old skunks and squirrels, and still I can’t throw them away. I could end up on Hoarders but instead of having tons of live pets, I would be surrounded by the remnants of Jasper’s toys. Needless to say, despite my determination to declutter the toy box, I don’t throw much away. Essentially, we live in a stuffed pet cemetery.

Jasper & friends. Peter helps me stage these—though he grumbles, I think he gets a kick out of it.

“OUCH!” is often yelled in our house when we step on one of Jasper’s deer antler chew toys that he’s left lying in the middle of the rug. Jasper’s toys aren’t just in the box. They’re in the kitchen, the family room, the hallway, the living room, the bedroom… even in the bathroom. They’re everywhere. We’re forever picking up his toys and putting them back in the box.

But sometimes, Peter and I just walk over them. One week an “indestructible” stuffed pink pig sat in our hallway for days. I refused to pick it up, and I wanted to test Peter on how long it would stay there.

On the third day, I was getting irritated. “Peter, are you ever going to pick up that pig?” I asked.

“I hadn’t noticed it,” he said. I didn’t believe him at first, but then I realized I ignore the toys, too. It isn’t that unusual to take a bath and have a stuffed cow and a scraggly monkey sitting on the floor staring at me (which sounds like a scene from a Hitchcock movie, I’ll admit).

On a night when Peter and Jasper were both away, I came home late from the studio and turned on the bedroom light. I yelped because I thought there was a raccoon in the bedroom (fifteen floors up in Manhattan, mind you)—but it was just one of Jasper’s toys, placed just so. Very funny, Jasper.

Jasper’s toys have kind of become our friends, too. We’re a growing family. I just wish I’d taught him to put the toys back in the box. But even Henry couldn’t do that.

One of my favorite photographs to stage is Jasper with all of his “friends” getting ready to watch a presidential debate. When he was just a young puppy, I made Peter help me gather all of the toys and pile them up around Jasper on the couch. Peter thought it was a bit ridiculous and over the top, but he rallied and that particular photograph ended up being one of my most popular on Twitter. Since the number of toys keeps growing, the number of “friends” does, too—but many of them are looking a little worse for wear since their stuffing has been ripped out.

Jasper and all of his friends getting ready to watch the presidential debate in 2012. That was one of my most popular Tweets—and still one of my favorites.

Just another night on the couch with Jasper and his buddies—talk about a popular dog.

My favorite thing to do when I get home from work on some days is to go into one of Jasper’s dedicated cupboards in the kitchen (yes, there is more than one!) and pull out a new toy. He must know the smell because he comes trotting in as I say, “Oh my goodness… oh my goodness! What is this? It’s a (fill in the blank).” You could give him anything and he’d be so thrilled. I once gave him a stuffed Larry King doll. He even loved that.

Peter used to prove this to me when Henry was alive. He’d say, of course he wags his tail when you talk in that voice. Then he’d demonstrate. “Henry! Do you want to go to the electric chair? Oh you do! You want to go to the electric chair!”

Tail wagged. Point taken.

But I’m still not throwing any of those toys out.