My dog chews the furniture whenever we leave

Anyway,

@Julisaxel,

Have you done a DNA test to find out the ancestry of your crossbreed?

The reason I bumped this thread in the first place was to find out, because someone else brought up your old post about your girl's mix😁!

I think @jador is right; that dog you met in the park that is supposed to be a Beagle x Podenco cross looks more like a sighthound to me. So if your dog looks like him, I'm thinking she might have some sighthound genes in her! I'm not sure if that answers your question?

"Cellulose belongs to the family of non-assimilable complex carbohydrates"

Haha!

(It's awful, isn't it? This place is contagious! I've caught Turdusmerula's "Haha" and Bangdji's "eh?"😂)

Leeleebijou,

Here is "MY big off-topic science rant😁" (warning: danger ahead!)

Hardly any living creature can actually digest cellulose properly.

Cows have several stomachs to maximise digestion and, despite all that, a cow pat still feeds hundreds of organisms, insects, and bacteria—it's brilliant fertiliser!

As for the rabbit, it's chosen to eat the same meal twice, which is why it "munches" on its own poos—it's so much better the second time around 😂!

Even the termite, who acts like a big shot claiming he can eat wood, is actually incapable of it; it’s a bacterium living in symbiosis inside his stomach that digests the wood instead of that big liar. And it's just as well, because that’s how we get rid of termites: we give them antibiotics! It kills the bacteria and, quite literally, the termites die... of hunger!

Similarly, people say "lettuce" isn't calorific, but that is WRONG! Otherwise, how would Galapagos tortoises manage to live for over 250 years, eh? How would a rabbit manage to run so fast, eh? How could it be possible that the largest animals, past and present, on land and at sea, are herbivores (eh)?

In fact, cellulose is an indigestible "sugar" like the "sweeteners" we put in coffee; if it doesn't make you put on weight, it's because we can't digest it!

Cellulose is basically the foundation of life on Earth!

Plants are the only ones that can create matter—"glucose" (which plants turn into indigestible cellulose).

Animals, on the other hand, have to eat and breathe to survive!

Everyone knows the chemical reaction for respiration: we say we breathe in O2 and breathe out CO2 and H2O, and plants do the opposite, but that's wrong, haha!

Actually, there's an element missing on the left to balance the equation: carbon! You can't transform O2 into CO2 or H2O, even by breathing!

The real equation is: "we EAT GLUCOSE, we breathe in O2 and we breathe out CO2 and H2O, and plants do the reverse."

Plants "transform" CO2 into O2—everyone knows that—but more importantly, in the process, they produce glucose, the starting point of the food chain! And we do the opposite! That's why a diabetic dies if they have a "hypo" (hypoglycaemia), because without sugar in the blood, there’s no point in breathing!

Sorry, Leeleebijou (and everyone else!), what you said brought back memories!

It was my mid-life crisis (forty-one and counting...), it reminded me that once upon a time, I actually went to school! 😂 But hey, apart from blathering on this forum, "going to school" isn't much use, is it!

Spot on. My mistake.

Citronella essential oil can also be effective.

Um, Piotr 👎 isn't cardboard just cellulose?

Cellulose belongs to the family of complex carbohydrates that dogs can't absorb—specifically, the insoluble dietary fibre category. In other words, it means dogs aren't able to digest or absorb cellulose; it just passes straight through their digestive system without providing any calories.

So, any cellulose the dog swallows ends up in their poo exactly as it went in.

If he swallows a tiny bit, it's not the end of the world, but it won't be broken down—it'll just come out as scraps of cardboard 😅

Brilliant, I’m going to give the cardboard a go. I’ve just bought a camera with a speaker, so we'll see if we can make a bit of a difference :)

Even if he swallows bits of cardboard, it won't do him any harm (though it’s best to avoid cardboard with ink on it).

A dog's stomach acid is so powerful that the cardboard will be broken down in no time.