For the dog what has it all...

Every now and then I feel pangs of guilt (tiny, little, itsy-bitsy pangs, but pangs none the less) that Brave Sir Hogarth has been unable to fly with me since I selfishly traded the larger Tampico for the far less voluminous RV. Maybe a gadget like this would make it up to him:



I know I would benefit from it. No, not by increasing my abysmal excercise quotient; it would give him something to do other than constantly dropping a wet, smelly, slobber-coated ball in my lap on the rare occasions when I try to watch TV. The gravitas of Mr. John Adams, for example, suffers grievously when a juicy Kong Ball gets plopped into my crotch. Trust me.

I don't know why we don't just get rid of the thing. The ball, not the canine companion, that is. It's supposed to help keep his teeth clean and his breath sweet and fresh, but the breath thing is apparently relative. I suppose regular dog breath is pretty nasty, but the ministrations of the Kong Ball cause it to smell like the inside of that abandoned tire you found out in the woods. Or the inside of a really old diving suit. Ick. Maybe he's using it wrong - he's never been big on reading the instructions, as you can imagine.

Of course, he's hopelessly devoted to it and would miss it terribly if we were to dispose of it. I've tried hiding it, but he mopes until he finds it. He likes to leave it out in the middle of a room, which presents an ankle twisting opportunity for the guy that leaves the house for work while it's still dark, so it has to be put in a corner. He resents having his toys moved, so often puts it right back in the center of the room. There are only two sentences that Hogarth understands: "Do you want to go outside," and everything other thing spoken to him. The first he understands as we would. The rest all translates in his mind as "go get your ball." Except for one exception: "Go get your ball" seemingly translates as "stand there and look stupidly at me." I appreciate the irony of that.

Anyway, I think he'd really love having a machine to throw the ball for him, although I suspect the noise of it would drive me batty. I'll wait for the New & Improved version.