Try to convince Max there is another toy, better than his tennis ball!!!
I met Max and his person at the beach today. She was armed with one of the most valuable inventions of all time........The Chuckit Ball Launcher, widely available and so very cool. Max was at East Beach on Marrowstone today, but he lives in Port Ludlow and his owner tells me he once swam all the way across Ludlow Bay, another way of saying he is a strong swimmer. Max is also a well behaved dog, or one like our former Labrador, Olive.........so focused on the ball that nothing else in the world matters.
I remember the days before Chuckit.......I wore out the toes of running shoes, kicking the tennis ball for Olive after tiring of throwing it for her. When we finally got our first Chuckit, a gift from somebody at the beach who felt sorry for me, or enjoyed Olive a great deal, I don't remember which. Anyway, Olive would run after the ball like Max, endlessly in pursuit, bringing it back, dropping the ball and bouncing up and down until I tossed it again.
One beauty of the Chuckit --- you can pick up the ball with the scoop end, never having to touch the slimered tennis ball, gripped firmly in the launch pad. The handles of a Chuckit come in different lengths and even in small sizes for dogs not so big as Max. He is a good sized Labrador and can pounce through major waves to swim after the ball.
When Olive was still in the waters of the living, I could toss the ball out about 75 yards. She would splash through surf, swim as strong as any dog, and fetch the ball, turning around while ignoring birds, otters, boats, fishermen, and all else so she could bring it back for more. Once, she lost sight of the ball at a place where the current is strong. She swam past the target, got caught up in the outgoing tide, swam about half a mile north, ducked under a bridge, leaped ashore, climbed a 100 foot high bluff, trounced through the woods, and arrived at my feet about 15 minutes later. On arriving at my feet, she wondered where the danged ball was.......Lucky for her, I carried a spare and we simply went on with the game, avoiding the brightly lit pieces of water.........
Today, Max ignored our Monsoon just as she ignored his "silly" game with the ball.......Monsoon is a totally committed STICK DOG!!!
Once in a great while she will play tennis ball with her buddy, Aurora. Aurora's people, Charlie and Sally, toss the ball with a Chuckit and I can coax Monsoon into joining the play if no sticks are in the vicinity. She will compete for the ball, but if a stick comes into view, forget it......
Sticks have a lot to say for themselves and I've had two stick dogs. Daisy was the first. Also a Yellow Lab, Daisy was not exactly an athlete.........She was a character and became so much of a loving pup that nothing surprised us, even when she began bringing me sticks I do believe she wanted me to admire for their other purposes.........In fact, she brought me sticks I eventually planted along the Madison River in Montana. She truly seemed to want me to have these pieces of wood, most of which came originally, from beavers. They cut the sticks, Daisy fetched them, and I put them to use.
We lived along the Madison during Daisy's middle years. She joined me on fishing trips and loved to fetch elk and deer antlers in thickets along the river, or the beautifull gnawed beaver sticks so common in the Rockies. She liked them, but usually cared little about the continuous toss and fetch routine enjoyed by the tennis ball crowd.
She brought me dazzling red osier dogwood stems from heaps of beaver chewings and long willow wisps, some still partly covered with fresh spring bark. Used to planting willow stakes for riparian habitat projects, I looked at her gatherings as a way to improve the Madison's streambanks. And so, we started poking the sticks from Daisy's collecting into the soft mud and wet soils near the spots we fished. Had Monsoon been along in those days, she would have ripped them from the ground as quickly as I put them in place.....Daisy simply went off in search of more stems and before we moved, I guess I planted more than a thousand willows and many dogwood trees......Some, I bundled into the shape of Shoshone Lodges, placing forty or fifty willow stems together to form sculptural features. Look for them along the river.........Last time I checked, there were some still in place. Not all the willows sprouted, but enough have grown tall in the past 15 to 20 years so that Daisy is remembered by the river.
Monsoon is a different kind of creature........Well, let's just say she is far more athletic than Daisy. She is as focused on her sticks as Max on the tennis balls.........Not just any stick will do, but this is more from my choosing than her picking them from the hundreds that wash up on the beaches along the shores where we walk in the evening.
A stick has to be strong enough to keep from being chomped into pieces Monsoon might swallow and light enough to toss. They can't be too long and not so thick; Monsoon has to be able to grasp and (maybe) return the offering........She also has to be able to fetch it if tossed out into the waves. Most importantly, she has to be able to see it in heavy seas because she isn't as strong as Olive and far more easily distracted. Once, she took after an otter and they tumbled together in the water for a while. Monsoon wasn't harmed and the otter appeared okay too......But, otters are well known for teasing and drowning dogs in our area, so I always keep an eye out for them.
I'll post a photo of this sometime.........but some of you will know what I am talking about. It works for some tennis ball dogs and every stick dog I've ever known.........Toss the stick a few times and chances are good, dogs begin to dig near the "prey" as if trying to bury a bone or whatever they imagine the stick to be. Wierd behavior. Monsoon is a champ at this and she will spend as much time digging alongside and atop the stick as she does going after it in the first place.
If this was a video of Monsoon digging, digging, digging, digging, digging........I'd put it on the Tube and we'd get a million hits. Especially, if she was joined by Lodi, who also enjoys the stick games. When the two of them join forces to dig alongside a mutually attractive stick, a hole soon appears in the sands and the dogs begin to disappear. Up to their elbows, they toss out sand fifteen or twenty feet behind them. Monsoon will dig with both front feet tossing sand in one, harmonious motion, checking behind her once in a while to see if the stick was launched in the process. So, watch where you tread. Circle wide when a pup pounces on a stick and puts paws to the beach sands.
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