I walked into the kitchen and there was an Unidentified Chewing Object on the floor.

Closer inspection revealed it to be organic, probably a short stick. I kept going.

The puppy – who technically at 13+ months probably is not a puppy, but still is one in her head – misses Her Boy. He had been gone only a day when I found a chomped-on, slightly bent gray plastic object on the floor. Closer inspection revealed that one to be a widget that plugs into a GameCube to facilitate a wireless controller.

“No,” I shouted at the dog. Expensive electronics, bad. I did a sweep of the boy’s room. iPod and dock, up onto the dresser. Duct tape wallet, the same. Every memory card I could find, ditto.

A memory card I recalled seeing just a couple of days before, though, remained out of sight. The original card for Animal Crossing, with our first town on it, was nowhere to be found. This was puzzling, because Maggie ordinarily mauls objects, but doesn’t completely obliterate them.

The game originally was a gift for my daughter, so I mentioned the missing town to her. “That’s where we have apples,” was her only response. And while they do grow native there, we have taken care to carry fruit between all the towns we create and plant trees in each one, so it’s not like we can’t get more apples.

We had learned early on that as a Lab, Maggie is happiest with something in her mouth, so my mission for the last week has been to make sure she has plenty of appropriate objects to chew. Dog toy, OK. Two-liter bottle, acceptable. Empty plant pots, no, particularly not shredded all over the yard.

So we pat the pup and reassure her. We smile as she naps on Her Boy’s bed. And we scan the floor for our missing town, fruitlessly.

This post originally appeared on ourMidland.com, the online home of the Midland (MI) Daily News. Republished with permission.