The Raccoon Within

During what proved to be another distraction-steeped week, I found this when I went into the kitchen to get some lunch. Big thanks to Lilly for providing perhaps the day’s only laugh. You’ve heard of raccoons washing their food? Well, it’s a habit Lilly learned from Ginko when it comes to dirty toys — balls in particular. I was going to call this How Clean Are Your Balls? But, I feared that would attract icky spam.

Both dogs regularly bring dirty toys from outside into the house, where they proceed to dunk them in the water bowl. I cannot tell if they simply want to guard the toy from the other while drinking or if it truly is an attempt to clean things off.

In this case, Lilly clearly drank all the water and left the toy behind.

The problem with soaking this particular ball is that it is foam-filled, and as you may be able to see from the top, it has been torn. There is nothing worse than listening to them play with one of these after it has been dipped and had time to absorb either drinking water — or pond water.

It seriously sounds like a plumber plunging a toilet … forever.

Sometimes, they lose balls because of this habit. If the water in the pond or creek is mostly frozen, the ball can easily get sucked under the ice. Lilly gets obsessed when this happens, so to prevent her from tearing up her feet digging at the ice, we have to call her inside and hope she forgets the ball is trapped.

So, in addition to Lilly harboring a cartoon wolf (as noted long ago in photos), it seems she has a raccoon in there too.