Dogs sure can chew. Taryn’s puppy, Bacon, destroyed a stuffed toy in a matter of minutes. The toy’s packaging claimed that it was able to endure sustained nomming, so she complained. An e-mail to the manufacturer, Hartz, led to a refund for the toy’s purchase price, even though they had misplaced the receipt.

I just wanted to share a story about some decent customer service and a company who can look past red tape to satisfy a customer.

During a routine trip to the grocery store, my boyfriend decided he wanted to spoil our puppy and bring home Hartz’s Tuff Stuff Faces dog toy (It was $5.99 or so), which was hanging in the pet aisle.

We got home and excitedly snipped off the tags and tossed it to our 5-month-old Boston Terrier “Bacon” before we began to unload our shopping bags.

But not even before the last cereal box made its way to the shelf, Bacon had torn a hole in Hartz’ “heavy-duty ballistic nylon shell.” This toy is designed to stand up to some super aggressive dogs, but our 13-pound Boston Terrier (who I could probably drop kick if I didn’t wuv dat wittle face so much) managed to render it useless in less than 15 minutes.

My boyfriend sent Hartz’s Customer Service team an email through the proper channels and got a quick (in C.S. standards) response. They’d be happy to give us a refund if we could just send them a copy of our receipt.

Whoops! We threw it away. Like we always have done with grocery receipts—at least since the invention of online banking.

We’d have taken full blame if this story ended in our being out of $6 with a broken dog toy. But when my boyfriend replied to the CSR about our over-zealous receipt tossing, the human being on the other end surprised us with a phrase rarely heard in customer service these days: That’s not a problem. If we could just email them a picture of the broken toy, they would send us a check for the value.

Our check arrived promptly and perfectly. We personally can’t recommend Hartz’s line of Tuff Stuff toys (your mileage may vary), but we’ll be quick to choose their other products from now on.

Hartz is a controversial company among animal lovers, but it’s good to hear that they stand behind their chew toys’ ability to withstand chewing.

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