Good dog gone bad

The man of the house had a favorite pair of earbuds for his iPod.
They used to look like this:

They were made by Koss and they weren't cheap, as earbuds go.
This morning when we got up, they looked like this:

Something isn't right as you can see. The little rubber things are gone, baby, gone.
Here is the culprit:

How did he manage to pick those tiny things off without eating the entire earbud? That is some manual dexterity!