Paper shredding as an art

Among Ivan’s many quirks is his insatiable interest in paper – eating it, not reading it. We have baby gates in front of our bookcases. This has progressed from a baby gate in front of the bookcase he most frequently visited to baby gates in front of all the book cases within his reach. We’ve learned that we must weight the baby gates with chairs and small tables so he doesn’t push them aside to get to the books. Some people are astonished that Ivan pulls books off the shelf to destroy. That’s a given. Magazines are not allowed to linger. We either read them or recycle them. They can spend a day or two stacked on a high shelf, but then they must go.

We’ve become quite knowledgeable about the inside of book bindings because we’ve seen the internal components shredded and strewn multiple times. This is not a mere tearing of the cover of a paperback, this is general annihilation of the hard back binding, the pages, the entire physical item. I took a couple of Ivan’s victims to a book repair workshop, mainly for entertainment. The gentleman running the workshop was quite confident that nearly any book could be repaired, until I began pulling the chewed remnants from a bag. “What kind of dog do you have?” he gasped when he saw the destruction. I proudly showed a photo of my handsome boy. There was much disbelief that this small sleek boy could cause so much devastation. I think the other participants were expecting something more along the lines of a large hairy beast with protruding fangs and talons.
Upon viewing photos of Ivan’s handwork, one friend astutely remarked, “So angelic one moment, and so destructive the next!” That’s a perfect description of Ivan. People think he looks so adorable (and he does), but when we tell them about a few of the items on the destruction list, they begin to look shell-shocked. The baby gate story weeds out a lot of people who think having a basenji might be nice, until they hear about the special shredding talents.