Oh Dog!

I am convinced that nobody even reads this blog anymore, so I am doing this more as a diary entry for the kids to look back on and giggle.

Dear Diary,
Annie, our dog, is a rascal. She loves her squeaky tennis balls. She stands in the kitchen and whines while starring intently at the cupboard in which they sit. When we pull them out she hops all over and races out the door to play.

So, there I am the other day. Playing in the back yard with her. I stand at one end with a tennis racket and lob them over to the other end and she races like she is in the doggie Nascar. Top speed across the yard, back and forth, back and forth.

Sometimes she will decide that one of the three squeaky balls is somehow better than the others. She hoards it. She will race for the flying ball, find it and realize it is the love of her life and keep it in her mouth while finding a quiet spot in the yard to mouth it. She will not give it back to me. Unless of course, I start to play with one of the other balls and convince her that what I hold is indeed much more valuable than what she holds. This sometimes works. I giggle.

The other day she races across the yard for my tennis serve, gets the ball, comes across the deck (why she can't just run over the lawn I have no idea, she prefers to run up and over the deck to me) back to my side, but no ball. I walk to the other side of the deck and look and look. I finally find it under the stairs of the deck, get it out and resume flinging tennis balls.

This happens several more times, she return to me with no ball. Each time it is under the stairs. I test her. Turns out this is what she is doing: Every time she grabs a ball that isn't her beloved, she comes over the deck to me. BUT, before she runs up the stairs to the deck, the drops the ball so it will go under the stairs. She runs over to me thinking that I am now forced to throw her favorite ball and not that yucky ball that she has hidden from the evil mommy forces.

I think I can hear her giggling.