I do I take a ruck sack when Rory sees the ball....sack he goes all smiley. He knows what game we will be playing.
Pongo loves playing footie with Paul (my OH). But if he sees me with the football he will trot away, pretending to suddenly be interested in something else. This is because he knows I'm so uncoordinated I am as likely to kick his head as I am to kick the ball. The dog is not stupid.
I have kicked the ball into her face more times than I care to admit She's lucky that I don't have the strongest kick. I'm lucky that she doesn't seem to mind a ball to the face (don't even go there!).
My first Rottie Duncan LOVED kicking around a ball on his own in the back garden. He'd just entertain himself thoroughly. When I tried to introduce the ball to Brogan, he looked at me like, "Er, what the heck am I supposed to do with that??".
Erm...soon? Heh, heh. No, in all honesty, I gave up on the timeline. I've had a lot to learn the past four months from the dogs here in Spain and I don't regret "slipping my deadline" on a puppy search. Yes, I still have to do the whole search thing, but I feel so much more sure of my choice AND that I can handle puppy insanity. Toby really whipped me into shape! Because really, after two months of Bodeguero craziness, what's a bit of crocopup? (but please don't quote that back to me when I finally have a puppy and I'm crying to you all how I'm exhausted and my clothes are in shreds)
Holly's "thing" is long sniffy walks. The longer the better! She'll play swimmy fetch if its just two of us and a nice bit of water but has never seen the point of fetching a tennis ball. She's just a very chilled-out dog.
Fetch - as in repeatedly chucking a tennis ball, at the worst from a ball chucker, is NOT retrieving. Repeated throws and fetches of a tennis ball, again and again and again generate this: "Is your dog a ball-addict? Obsessed with the chuck-it? While to say a dog has an addiction or an obsession is gross anthropomorphism, we can often describe their behavior as appearing desperate, frantic, anxious, or excited. We can do this because there are actions both voluntary and involuntary that we can assign to these emotions. A dog that will run until his tongue is swollen, his eyes bloodshot, and his breath labored, has prioritized something above his own personal cooling mechanisms and care. While this might be normal for a wolf in hot pursuit of a deer, it is less normal for a labrador in hot pursuit of a hunk of rubber." I know, I have a ball obsessed dog who would drive himself to injury and into the ground before he stopped - if I let him. Which I certainly do not. I don't say that casually - and indeed when I hear people say 'my dog is ball obsessed' I usually think 'pffft! yeah, right'. And when/if I meet their dogs they are not ball obsessed at all. Charlie is, really. I never 'play fetch' with Charlie. I can't remember the last time I threw a ball for him (on land, he is allowed to fetch - a few times - a ball from water, because he can't hurt himself by swimming to a ball). But he retrieves. If he wasn't allowed to retrieve I think he'd go mad. He does long memory retrieves where he can run long distances, under control, and then slow and hunt. He loves it. But it's not 'fetch the tennis ball' again, and again, and again.....there is nothing good about that in my view.
