A New Kong

We took Spike for a walk in his favorite meadow. He doesn't care what it looks like, but it has become pretty dry and depressing until the rains start and the grass grows again. There are lots and lots of interesting stones but removing them is both illegal and impossible. More on that later...

After our walk we went to the pet store and got Spike a new Kong. We were lucky to get the last one shaped like a bone which seems to provide a convenient chin rest when he isn't carrying it around with him.

Dogs and their toys are interesting. Our first dog, a Springer named Emma was a great backpacking companion and a wonderful swimmer. Her fixation was on water. She could sense a pond or even a puddle, completely hidden to our eyes and  would suddenly appear wet and muddy. She had absolutely no interest in retrieving anything. We once found a tennis ball on one of our walks and threw it for her. With much encouragement she strolled over to it, picked it up, then dropped it on the ground and peed on it just to make herself clear.

Our next dog, Lucy, a black lab was absolutely obsessed with tennis balls. We had to hide them from her in the house or she would keep dropping them at our feet until we threw it. We used to take her out in the street and throw it for her there but she developed some kind of arthritis in her feet from running on tarmac so we had to stop.

When Ozzie was a puppy he could destroy a soft toy with a squeaker in it in 20 minutes, scattering stuffing everywhere. John kept buying them for him when he got dog food because the pet store had three toys for $5. e couldn't even let him come upstairs in the morning because he would tear around the bedroom, on the bed, off the bed, into the closet and the laundry basket, destroying any pillows left in his path. We developed the habit of getting dressed as soon as we got out of bed before we went downstairs to let him out of his crate. Almost overnight, when he was about 18 months old, he stopped destroying soft toys and became a couch potato. But he would retrieve a stick and often carried one in his mouth as we went on our walks, occasioning many comments like, 'Oh I see he's a branch manager'....

Spike came by his Kong because it was the one thing couldn't destroy. We probably would have let him destroy the ones we still had left from Ozzie, who showed little interest in them, but he not only destroyed them, he consumed them...as in swallowed whatever he could tear off or out of them. He does tend to push his Kong underneath the furniture and then growl at it until one of us inelegantly gets down on our hands and knees to retrieve it for him. I won't throw it for him so he doesn't bother me but John will toss it across the room for him. A bone of a different kind between John and me...one of contention.

I will save the ongoing story of the the saga of the rocks for another day.....