It doesn’t take much to entertain dogs as long as you are prepared to try. Take now, right at this moment, I don’t have to try to do it because it’s being done for me by a bunch of hungry mice. We have a bird table just outside our lounge doors and the messy birds drop seed onto the floor around the table. Each evening as dusk starts to fall, the mice come out from wherever they spend their days and forage around under the table looking for tasty titbits. We don’t mind a bit because the mice are dead cute and because the dogs settle down in front of this “doggy TV” and remain transfixed for several hours.
We don’t get away so lightly that we don’t have to try at all though – they do need to have a good old charge around to let off steam but we regard that as good for all of us because, if this doesn’t sound too odd, it gives us chance to walk too. By that I mean that we probably wouldn’t find the time if we didn’t need to for the dogs.
The game is different when we’re out on the moor with them. The hierarchy of the tennis ball is markedly different. For a start, JD doesn’t see the need to present it to us for throwing and then snatch it away before we’ve picked it up. Oh no – he puts it down and waits for one of us to throw it. He’s extremely patient and focused. Lola on the other hand dances round behind him working herself up more and more until she is so beside herself that she’ll come hurtling past him, snatch the ball then run off with it and with JD in hot pursuit.
They both chase the same ball – something they’d never do in the field – there, the first ball is chased by JD, then Lola chases one, then they each chase their own ball. On the moor, if Lola gets the ball, she won’t bring it back to us, she runs along the track then deposits it on the ground for JD to pick up and bring back. It’s as if she’s keen to participate but ultimately sees her own role as a bit-player. Here, she has taken the ball off into the distance for him to collect and bring back.
They are so focused on their entertainment that they don’t take any notice of anything else going on around them. That’s good all of the time but especially at this time of year when the blams are starting to find their way out of their nice cosy wombs and into the nasty, cold, real world. The dogs, as long as they have their ball, pay them no attention whatsoever. Today, a thrown ball landed in a surface mine pit. They chased it into the pit where they rummaged in the marsh grass until Lola managed to retrieve it. They ran off so Lola could dump it and JD could bring it back. In the meantime, I could hear lots of rustling in the pit and couldn’t work out if the wind could be making that much movement in the marsh grass. The noise grew and grew until out popped a badger. He emerged about six feet from where we stood, then scurried off as fast as his little stubby legs could carry him in the opposite direction. JD and Lola were blissfully unaware of Brock’s presence and could only think about the tennis ball.
This was the first time I have ever seen a badger alive in daylight. I have seen one twice before – Marcia (our pub’s landlady) feeds them at about 10 pm most nights so if we are in the pub and think to go outside at that moment, we see them being fed. The other occasion was late at night on the way home from Rose’s recorder concert. So, today was a special day because by providing entertainment for the dogs, we stumbled across a rare and lovely sight.
Oh and by the way - JD might look as though he's wearing a strangely located doggy thong just to look like a sexy beast but he is, in fact, sporting the look of a dog on a brilliant harness that means we can control him much better when we clip on his lead.
