Day 63 Rainy day

Me, bored out of my mind

Today was a rainy day. We did get to walk this morning, around lunch and in the afternoon, but because of the weather, there were barely any other dogs, and since Jen refuses to play with the ball with me, I was full of energy and begging Jennifer to find something to palliate to my boredom.

Jen chases me with the vacuum cleaner
I'm NOT counting that as a game!

When this happens, we play indoor games. Here are the games we play:

• hide-n-seek. Jen waits for a moment of inattention on my part and hides. When I realize she is missing I look for her in a hurry. When I find her, I am as happy as if she'd left the house for 12 hours! But Jen is quite big, and there are not so many hiding spots for her, which brings us to the second game...
• hide a toy. I have to sit and stay, while Jen hides a toy in the house. This can be quite tricky, as now she even hides a toy on, under and behind other things. I'm happy Molly and Kiwi had the courtesy to leave most of my nose intact as it is quite handy,
• tug-of-war. I'm progressively getting stronger, but I slip on the floor while Jen has a better grip. Harumpf, one day I will be stronger than Jen!
• getting treats out of a kong. Later in summer she said she'd make a popsicle out of the kong, but only to eat out on the porch because it can make a mess,
• wrestling. Not a fair game though because I am not allowed to use my mouth. So I either lick Jen madly, or find a toy to chew on while Jen is pushing me around. Still one of my favorite games though,
• some kind of training. Last to date was "clean". What Jen means by this is to clean the floor of my toys and drop them in the toy box. But unless she is really on my back checking I am doing it properly, I get very distracted and even the most boring toys suddenly become super interesting. Jen can't complain, she does the exact same thing when she is putting away her stuff!

Sitting and staying while Jen goes and hides a toy

Also, I play with Kiwi a lot. We became friends. Or she is my friend, and I am her... well she tolerates me more now!

I never talk about my night walks, because Jen is bad at taking pictures at night, and I prefer to illustrate my activities with photo material.

But anyway, tonight in the park I met 3 other future guide dogs: Cassy, Oliver and Monty.

Jen is not good at aiming with the camera at night
so Cassy is cut out.
Here is Monty, Oli and I

And I found my first hedgehog tonight! It's basically a ball, but not a fun ball, because I can't pick it up.

Jen told me StinkyR...hum I mean Kiwi is an expert at finding them. She once spotted 8 in one evening! Jen used to prevent her from bugging the hedgehogs (Kiwi is always on leash so it's easy for Jen). But every night, Kiwi would pull and pull and try to play with them. One night Jen got the brilliant idea to let Kiwi play with one, hoping Kiwi would get mildly hurt and would stop tugging on the leash.

Kiwi played a long time with the hedgehog, the hedgehog got a bit stressed and rolled up into a ball much to Kiwi's delight who rolled it around. Eventually Jen decided the hedgehog had enough and took Kiwi home.

Only home she realized what a mistake this had been. She found 17 baby ticks on Kiwi's face! (apparently hedgehogs are the perfect tick vectors...).

So tonight, when I found the hedgehog, I was careful not to get to close to it!