Long drive today! (Which means no blogging, probably until tomorrow.)
And while master’s away, Coco must stay.
I always feel guilty leaving Coco behind, because at her youthful and vibrant age, she has unbelievable amounts of energy.
She’s so fast that it’s hard even to get a photo of her, but to give you an idea here’s one taken the other day during one of her many daily exercise routines:
The pattern is this: I dutifully throw her stick as far as I can, and she instantly catches it — often before it hits the ground, then brings it back to me and demands more, more, more! Whether I’ve had any time to recover from the throw is as irrelevant as whether I want to stop.
And it goes without saying that every time I try to stop, Coco draaags me back in!
The interval involved in the Coco retrieval cycle is about as long as the interval between publishing a blog post, and the irrational nagging feeling that I should put up another one. The difference, of course, is that readers are more discerning than Coco, so I can’t toss out the same post over and over again.
(Well, I guess I can. But I shouldn’t.)
Geez, the above reads like an extreme form of moral relativism, of the type I should resolutely condemn! I hasten to point out that I am comparing the time interval only, and if I am making any judgment at all, it is upon my own neurosis only. In no way do I mean to compare Coco’s demanding (possibly tyrannical) nature with the generally kindly and tolerant disposition of blog readers. I think it is fair to conclude that few if any of this blog’s readers are natural born fighter athletes with brains the size of limes.
(Of course, even if some of them were, I’d be a hypocrite to hold it against them.)
Comments
7 responses to “Running away from pet neutrality issues . . .”
This is my favourite Coco photo!
Thank you!
Coco does have the best excuse of all; it’s fun! And she gets to do it with her best friend. 🙂
The other day, I met a neighbor with a dog. I asked him if she were a pit bull, and he replied in the affirmative as said dog went into raptures over a person! a person!
I then observed that some people were quite foolish to be afraid of pit bulls, as she clearly wasn’t dangerous, and he said, “Well, she might lick you to death.”
Then you have Coco, who’s a happy healthy young animal with excess energy and a brain the size of a lime. 🙂
5 Tips for Tiring Coco Faster:
1. Throw a stick that is bigger than her body. (Hard to do with Coco, but keep in mind it doesn’t have to be heavy, just awkward.)
2. Throw the stick into heavy surf. (By heavy I mean waves that are higher than her height. She’s a pitbull so she’ll brave the ocean.)
3. Throw the stick into the ocean from the top of a steep sand dune. (Running uphill in sand with a stick bigger than her body after crashing through waves to retrieve it makes this a pitbull-worthy challenge. By cooling off in the water Coco will spend less energy on heat dissipation, which means that she’ll be GENUINELY tired when she gets tired, and will require a longer recovery time.)
4. Between throws hold stick at chest level or higher, with both hands, and have Coco jump up and grab it, and flop around by her mouth until you’re too tired to hold on. (Her massive jaws will require massive bursts of anaerobic energy. Coco’s a big dog but you can do it. Yelling “Git some! Git some!” is optional. This will also help you judge how tired she is getting. You don’t want to throw the stick far out into the ocean if she can’t hang on the stick.)
The above works well with my dog. After 20 minutes of this she needs to rest for at least 5 minutes.
Thank you all! Hark, one of these days I’ll have to teach Coco how to swim. Maybe I should tell her to swim softly and fetch a big stick!