A Pizzle By Any Other Name

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and dogs gotta chew.

A lot.

Chewing things occupies a large portion of Willie’s day.  In fact, most of what Willie does in a normal day can be assigned to one of just four categories: Sleeping, Walking, Chewing, and Everything Else.

From the beginning, we made sure we had a few things for him to chew on, though we’d been warned off antlers (“he shouldn’t chew anything harder than his teeth”), rawhide (“pieces can get stuck in his belly and require surgery”), and Nylabones (“dogs break off pieces of flavored plastic that pass through the digestive tract”).  Willie liked the cross-cut raw meat bones we bought from the feed store and kept in the freezer, and sometimes he chewed absently on the knotted rope toy we gave him.  But on his fifth night here in his new home, Willie nearly lost his little mind when Julie brought over his first “Bully Stick.”

“Dogs love these,” Julie said, handing me what looked like a dark brown pencil wrapped in plastic. “They really go nuts for them – and they last a long time.”

“What is it, Jules?” I asked, removing its plastic wrapper.

“It’s a penis.”

“Really?” I said, holding it up for inspection.

“Yes – a bull’s penis.”

“This little thing is from a bull?”

I looked at the disembodied reproductive organ in my hand, finding it hard to imagine that this dried and smoked little tube had ever been attached to an animal the size of a Fiat.  “Well,” Julie said, shrugging off her sweater, “it used to be longer – they’re something like two or three feet long, but after they’re dried and smoked they’re cut into six inch lengths.”

I winced, then handed the meat stick to Willie who’d been dancing about on his hind legs beside me in anticipation.  He clamped the stick in his mouth and ran into the sunroom, picked a spot to settle himself on the carpet, and began chewing and gnawing with a fervor I hadn’t seen before.

“It’s all natural,” Julie said, “100% beef – just be sure you only buy the ones that are made in America.  The low-odor kind.”

“Only American penises, huh?”

“Right – the ones from China made dogs sick.  Some of them died.”

After dinner, we joined Willie in the sunroom where he was still happily gnawing away on the penis.  “He’s eaten almost half of that thing already,” I said.  When I sat down on the sofa, Willie grabbed the penis between his teeth and hopped up beside me. The end of the stick he’d been chewing was now wet and limp, the shredded tissue on the end flaring like an exploding cigar.  Then I got a whiff of the thing — a smoky meat odor with a strong top note of reconstituted urine.

“Wow; that smells pretty bad, Willie.”  At the sound of his name, Willie dropped the stick on the sofa cushion and tried to lick my face.”

“Ugh,” I said, holding him away, “back off, penis-breath.”

I remembered then that Keri, Willie’s adoption coordinator, had included “pizzle sticks” in her list of recommended treats – smoky, cheese or peanut butter filled Slim Jims — something I’d looked for but couldn’t find among the pig’s ears and gnaw bones on our maiden trip to our local PetSmart.

‘What’s he chewing on?” Richard asked when he arrived home, then, when he learned what it was, “Why is it called a ‘bully stick?’”

“Because ‘Penis Chews’ didn’t test well with the focus group,” I said.

Later that night I Googled pizzle sticks and bully sticks and discovered several variations on the theme for sale – penises that had been smoked, stretched, flavored, filled with cheese, formed into coils (“bully springs”) and even three penises braided together into a single chew – which struck me as the most unnatural and macabre variation of them all.

Later that week, because Willie obviously loved these things so much, we bought a six-pack of Bully Sticks from the feed store.  Around our house these days, it’s now not unusual to hear phrases like:

“Where’s Willie’s penis?”

“He’s been chewing on his penis all morning.”

“Willie!” Get that penis off the sofa!”