Yes, I’m talking about you Olive. I am about to blow your little secret wide open. My beloved pooch has a corner fetish. (Olive is hiding behind the chair right now, blushing.) She is a Herculean “Corner Chewer.” She puts backhoes to shame. She finds anything that comes to a right angle—a point—impossibly irresistible.

What do I mean by corners? I’m talking the beveled glass desktop in my office. The microfiber-upholstered arm of the couch. ANY cardboard box, whether it housed tampax or a refrigerator. ESPECIALLY if it came from amazon.com. Dog toys made of particleboard. The seat of the copper-colored wicker kitchen chairs. Any object that comes to a sharp, unfriendly, threatening, point, you name it. Olive seems to live by the code of “IF IT STICKS OUT IT MUST BE GROUND DOWN.” Isn’t this an old Chinese proverb? Wow. Olive may actually be smarter than me.

I give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she’s trying to make the world a safer place and envisions a world full of circles, dots and holistic, friendly, non-threatening curved lines. (Or maybe I’ve just accidently swallowed an LSD tab.) Maybe she feels she’s being threatened by these seemingly inanimate protusions and must demonstrate a Mike Tyson-like show of force to achieve dominance. Better she uses her canine teeth (Isn’t the word “canine” a bit redundant when discussing a dog’s oral anatomy?) to tear corners off things instead of ears off people.

More likely, she is just sharpening the rows of chiclet-white blades inside her mouth. Although I get the feeling that Olive will still be teething when she is 102 human years old. But the most practical explanation is that she’s just bored. “REALLY? WELL SO AM I. I’VE BEEN STUCK INSIDE THE HOUSE ALL WINTER TOO BUT YOU DON’T SEE ME PROJECTING ALL MY PENT-UP ENERGY INTO MY TEETH, DO YOU?” This dog is plowing through bully sticks like a buzzsaw or a wood chipper. I should invest in the bull penis market because I spend at least $100/month feeding Olive’s bully stick habit. The irony of all this is that she has much better teeth than I do.