Playtime

One of the pleasures of bringing home new dogs is getting to know their personalities. Gracie and Buster are both playful, but in different ways.

Gracie likes direct contact, wrestling and rough-housing. Her favorite game is this one: I stand or kneel over her with both hands raised, hovering. Then I make a quick darting motion with one hand or the other. My goal is to give her a shove or even roll her over; hers is to spin out of the way and catch my hand in her mouth. She loves that one. (It helps, from my POV, that she has a "soft mouth": she can achieve a good firm grip without breaking skin. Ben was the same way.)

Buster is more toy-oriented. He loves to play Chase, Shake-the-Rat, and Tug-of-War; sometimes he'll pick up a toy and just spin in place, growling ecstatically. (It's even better if the toy has trailing limbs, like the octopus-thingie.)

I brought home a couple of jingle balls today, but I'm not sure how much they like them. Buster was already holding a toy when I rolled the ball for him; he dropped the toy and started after the ball, but then stopped and went back. A bird in the hand, I suppose. I'll have to take them out in the yard and toss the ball for them; that might be more to their liking. It's a little on the chilly side for that today, though. (The temperature's decent, but it's chilly-humid.)

I'll stop burbling eventually....

Excitement

Well. That was interesting.

Buster and Gracie were doing no more than nibble at the dry food I'd bought them, so today I got some canned food and served them a mix of dry and canned. They were digging in, so I went back to the computer room... only to be interrupted by ferocious growling and yelping. Apparently Gracie tried to horn in on Buster's food and he took violent exception. He was chasing her - literally on her tail - when I got there and got them separated. Gracie took off for distant parts while I calmed him down and led him back to his food. I found Gracie cowering under the desk; I coaxed her out and held her for a while, then carried her back to her food. Even then it took some doing to get her eating again.

Just then, the doorbell rang: a couple of solicitors for a local construction company. I opened the door a crack to talk to them and bingo! the info sheet on Buster was proved correct; he was out the door and halfway across the yard. Fortunately, one of the solicitors knew the doggie protocol; he lured Buster within range, and I managed to pick him up and carry him back inside.

Here's hoping Gracie's learned her lesson; I don't want to have to set up a physical barrier between their dishes. (They aren't side by side; his is around the corner from hers, so it wasn't a misunderstanding - she definitely intruded.)