Heel, Tow...Heal, Toe

It was such a good weekend. We walked to the boat ramp both days. On Saturday evening, JK went to a birthday party for Zak’s little girl. She turned 1.  They had a great time. Buzz and I got dinner a little early and had to stay home. We didn’t care. We just napped. It had been a busy day. 

JK are still doing my training. They say it all ties together. The more I have to mind my manners and use my brain and obey, the more good energy I’ll generate, which gives me more freedom, which makes me more responsible, which takes more energy, which means I will be too tired to lick my toes, which….what?  Oh. Buzz says, “Just call it the circle of life and get on with the story!!” 

The circle of life to me is a ball. And I know that’s right, because listen to this.

J bought me a basketball on Friday. It’s black and brown, and says Spalding All Star on it. When she took out of the back of the car, I could hardly wait for her to pull off that cardboard wrapping. I leapt around and whined. “Is that mine! Is that mine??” Then she tossed it into the back yard, and I raced out the dog door and started herding it.  I couldn’t get my mouth around it to bite it, like I can the volleyball. That ball rolled like it was running from me. I pushed it around with my nose and for exactly ten minutes, it was the funnest toy I’ve ever had. Then I got my teeth into the side just a little bit, and the ball went flat, in ten seconds flat. And so did I. JK looked out the window and I was sitting dejectedly beside it. It had died.  When I nudged it, it just sat there.  Man. I was so bummed. J kicked it for me a couple times but it wasn’t the same.

On our walk the next morning, I was still full of energy even after we spent an hour at the boat ramp. I wasn’t wearing my Gentle Leader; the leash was just hooked to my collar.  K said to me, Heel, and I kept pulling. Max, heel.  He tugged me back beside him.  I just couldn’t stand it; I had to be out front.

Heel. Pull. Heel. Pull. Without my GL, it’s like I don’t have a leash on at all. I’ve always been this way, there is just too much to see and smell!

Finally K said, Tow. And I did! I towed him right along. K said, OK, I get it, we were just using the wrong command. J laughed.

Then K said to J, So anyway, I was thinking, if I got some of that expandable caulking foam, would it fill up the basketball so Maxwell couldn’t bite it or deflate it.

I don’t know, I’ve never thought of that. I’ve never heard of that.  Do you think it could work?

Can’t hurt to try.

Why don’t you pick some up on your way back from the Harley store. Oh, and some Chick Fil A. 

Naturally, Chick Fil A. Chick with extra pick and CS. (That is a chick fil a sandwich with extra pickles, and cole slaw. They abbreviate everything!)

Yum!

JK never share their Chick Fil A.  Buzz says it is pure human greed and gluttony. Then he stole my rawhide, right when I got it to the nice chewy slimy part. He does that. He lies there and lets me do all the hard work, then he steals it when I run off to see what that sound was.  JK think it’s funny. Buzz’s teeth are getting old, Maxie, J told me. He has a harder time chewing on things now. You’re nice to let him have your chewy, slimy one.  Here’s a new one for you.  Sigh. I have to start all over.

That afternoon, K came back on the Harley (we can hear him coming a mile off), with sandwiches and some canisters of something. JK ate their Chick Fil A (and didn’t share; Buzz muttered “What did I tell you.”)  Then K went out to the garage and started banging around.

Buzz pointed one ear straight up.  “Don’t look now, but there’s a mad lab in the garage,” he said. “And I’m not talking Old Yeller.”  Disrespectful! I was kind of shocked.  I reminded him that the sibs as little girls had sobbed into their lunch plates (a story Buzz had heard them telling) when they watched Old Yeller, but he still says old men can tell it like it is.

Mad lab! I wanted to see the mad lab.  J took me out there.  K was in his workshop, with my basketball on the counter. He had poked a small hole in it and was filling it with a tube of goo. 

Shouldn’t you be wearing safety goggles in case that Molotov basketball goes off?  J asked.

I am wearing safety goggles.

Oh, please. Those are reading glasses!

Close enough. 

How many canisters will that take?

I don’t know, I bought two.

J backed way up. I went with her.  I was very suspicious of the mad lab.  But J was too fascinated by what was happening to leave. I bet this is one thing I couldn’t google and find the answer for,  she said. ‘How many tubes of extra big caulking foam does it take to fill up a deflated basketball.’

K put in the two full canisters. Then a funny thing happened. The foam started squirting out all three holes: the regular air hole, the hole I made with my tooth, and the hole K made for filling it.  And that stuff is so sticky! It got on K’s clothes, his nice North Face t-shirt, and his watch.  K grabbed a big screw and wound it down into the main hole. 

The stuff kept coming out of the little holes, sometimes making little screechy noises that made me nervous, but J was worse.  Put it outside, she said to K. If that thing goes off, I don’t want you to be standing next to it. I doubt your safety goggles will save you.  

Later, when J was getting ready for the party, she thought it was too quiet so she went to see what was happening in the mad lab.  K was working on the Harley and I was watching him. The basketball was still foaming, sitting out on the pine straw by the driveway like a gigantic, deadly mutant mushroom.
J was relieved.  I wasn’t sure whether I’d come down and find you with a large screw embedded in your forehead.

The ball foamed all night and into the next day.  When it finally stopped, there were huge yellow, oozy chunks all over the ball (one looked just like a tiny brain.) It had leaked most of the foam out, and was almost as flat as when KJ started their mad lab experiment.  I tell you, the things I learn from my people.

But it doesn’t surprise me that much.  J has a mad lab of medical things when it comes to my feet. If she sees me biting at my feet, she gets out this spray, called hydrocortisone, and spritzes them.  I run, fast, when I see that bottle of spray, but J says, Maxie, come. COME. And for some reason, I always slink back and sit down and give her my best hangdog look, and let her spray them. If it makes her happy. She always pets me and says good boy, good dog.

The vet doesn’t know why I sometimes get these itchy feet.  JK doesn’t know. Neither do I!  It only happens in the spring.  In the winter, it goes away. J has googled “dog’s itchy feet” many times, and she has put socks on me, and creams, and sprays and even gauze, once, to help me feel better.  I leave the socks on for a little while, but then pull them off.  Last year J read about this “harness” that she could make with elastic and little kid athletic socks.  She put that on me.  It is impossible to have any dignity when you look like an old hairy Swiss man in lederhosen, with a string of elastic running down the full length of your back, goose-stepping with those socks on and sliding on the wood floor. J hasn’t tried that this year.  Buzz was sympathetic and told me his glowing green eye cone story, which he promises to share sometime with everyone.

But my feet aren’t as bad this year, anyway.  JK have pretty much decided to just spritz them now and then with the anti-itch spray and then let nature take its course. They feel that if I’m staying busy, not bored, and have used up all my energy, I probably won’t bite my feet either. I’ll be too tired.  I try not to chew on them but sometimes….I see J fighting to not scratch her poison ivy that she gets now and then.  I think it’s kind of the same thing.

J ordered me a new ball from an online dog store. I guess dogs can’t bite it or deflate it. She says herding it around, along with my obedience lessons, will make me so tired I don’t have the energy to lick my feet. 

See?  Heel, Tow... Heal, Toe. The circle of life.  It all comes back to a ball.