20091222

House Sitting - Dog

I've been house sitting for a few days now at a friend from Church's
place. It's a great big house on a nice lot that has a large open
driveway in front of it where the dog and I play catch. The dog is one
of the largest labs that I've ever seen. And, as far as labs go, they
never really grow out of their puppy stages. This one is pretty good,
as long as you tire him out. So, we play catch with the tennis ball in
the driveway with a 'chuck-it' slinger. Those slingers are awesome,
with just a flick of the wrist the ball flies a hundred feet. I guess
they're basically an atlatl, but 'chuck-it' is a fitting name.

The driveway where we play catch has been plowed, and has a little berm
of snow that comes up to the dog's midsection. He likes to grab the
ball without slowing down for the berm and plow over the top of it.
Usually I think he does this because of all the hard packed snow on the
driveway that makes it fairly difficult for him to stop in time to avoid
crashing into the pile of snow. Which is exactly what happened on one
of the throws.

The ball left the atlatl and the dog took out after it, but just as he
was catching up to it, it took a funny hop and the dog hand to go
sideways in order to snatch it. This sudden movement caused him to
slide sideways a little bit on the hard pack, which normally would have
been fine. However, this time he was much too close to he berm and his
momentum carried him directly into it. The berm, being exactly the
right height for this, took out the dogs legs and he went flipping over
it onto his back on the far side, where I saw, for a moment, four
floundering paws waving in the air. I started laughing so hard that I
about had to take a knee to keep from falling down.

On top of all this, the dog hadn't kept hold of the tennis ball, and it
took him nearly a minute in order to find it. Good times.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Ha ha. Silly dog, that would've been fun to watch.