Sometimes Lilly is so intent on playing fetch in a way that doesn’t get Ginko riled up to the point that he ruins the game. The ONLY way to accomplish that is by using a stick rather than a toy. For some reason, Ginko could not care less about sticks. Lilly’s stick strategy worked fine until she became friends with Katie, the borzoi, because Katie had no qualms about stealing sticks.
But, sometimes, I think my brilliant, sensitive girl can’t tell the difference between a stick and kindling.
OK, I know this stick isn’t as big as the full-out logs KB’s dogs often choose as playthings, but I fear throwing the bigger of Lilly’s two recent selections because it could do serious damage, if I bonked her in the head.
Still, she loved that darn piece of kindling, stolen from our wood pile. I ask you: How can you say no to this girl?
Our dogs love sticks too. I had some wood piled up by the back door in the fall and now those pieces are all over the yard in various stages of chewing.
This post reminds me of running into a neighbor and her dog at a local pond. We chatted and she looked around for a stick to throw for her pooch. Of course, she knew the perfect size and how far to throw it. So the dog went in and out of the pond several times. My husband got into the spirit and found his own stick, but it was way too long. Undaunted, he threw it far into the pond. The dog, named Cary, fetched it the first time. He threw it again, much farther out. Cary would not go into the pond to fetch his stick. She looked at us as if to say, “Don’t you know better than to throw such a big stick so far!!! NO WAY I’m going in that deep.”
On my blog last week I put a photo of Cary with the stick the first time he threw it, when it was actually retrievable.
Why say “no”? The worst that stick will do is knock some sense into her head 🙂
My last crazed retrieving dog would get her heart set on one stick, and it would be “the stick” for weeks. She’d run outside into our world of pine trees and zillions of sticks on the ground, search around a little, and return with the one and only stick! Who knows what’s special about the one that a dog chooses. But, they sure do get strong opinions about it!