Bob is an awesome dog. We go running and camping together. He plays in the yard while I garden. And tonight he even helped me find a chicken that decided to hunker down in a bush instead of the coop — oh yeah and it’s pouring rain outside. We are a team. Even right now he’s cuddled up between Jason and I on the couch snoring. Adorable. 
Bob has a problem. He loves me too much. So when I’m doing something like knitting, which means I’m not doting on him, he grabs whatever smells like me or whatever seems like a good squishy play thing and mouths it. He doesn’t usually rip it to shreds. No, he just kind of tugs at it and cuddles it and gives it a little chew.
Before we realized what was going on we came home to find that he had collected every single one of my shoes (about 4 pairs) into his bed and was gently mouthing them – thank goodness or I would have been out all my favs. I can only imagine he was shedding doggy tears wondering when I would return (we were on a bike ride). Well, we’ve kept all my shoes in the closet now and that’s that.
Except now he’s turned on my knitting. Having sat in my lap and having literally every inch of yarn pass through my hands means my knitting is super awesome Kristin replacement in his mind. Well, right behind smelly shoes – I have the smelliest of feet. 
Ever so silently he’ll come up beside and slip away with whatever knitting is around. And he’s great at picking out the most hard to mend spots to chew – like he chewed off the cast on edge. He also chewed my knitting needles. And he ate part of a sweater.
I love this dog so much, but my gosh it’s hard to knit around him. Worse than the cats. On the trip I meant to get some serious knitting done, but then only packed one straight needle. So I’m really jonesing to knit. But do I dare? I think I will. But first I need to sort this mess out. Sad thing is I only had a few more rows to go. I had it just about finished when I wrote the pattern for it for Issue 3.5 of Craft Leftovers, I set it aside and had just decided to finish it (finally!), when Bob got ahold of it.
Or maybe I’ll just start a completely new project and just stash this one for now. We’ll see. I’ll show you my progress next week whichever way it goes.
Happy Knitting!
Kristin
Oh, girl. The fact that you intend to sort that chewed knitting out makes you a hero in my eyes. I don’t even have the patience to tink or frog myself! Good on you!
Oh my! well, my dog grabs and runs with the yarn. So not only do I have a slobbered UFO, a ton of yarn gets yanked out of the skein and the whole thing turns into a mess. I have basically given up on crocheting at home since I can’t seem to train it out of him.
My suggestion to keep Bob from eating your knitting and your shoes, is to sleep in an old tshirt/sweat shirt for a few nights and then give it to Bob. He gets your scent and something to cuddle with when you leave to keep him happy.
I’ve done the same thing with my cats when I go out of town and it really helps.