I have enjoyed all of my interviews with dog experts on the “My Doggie Say…” Radio Show. I’m learning a lot about dogs, and I hope my listeners are, too. This week’s interview with Carla Genender, author of “DogSense,” was especially pleasant, because Carla truly understands how we can learn lessons from our pets. That’s really the point of “DogSense.” It’s filled with lovely little stories about how we humans can get better at human relationships by observing our furry friends.
In the last few months, I’ve had a similar experience with Callie, who keeps reminding me that it’s important to take pleasure from simple things.
Callie is a died-in-the-wool “ball dog.” She loves any kind of ball — beach, soccer, tennis, golf, you name it. But she has an especially rapidly-growing collection of tennis balls. Barbara plays tennis once a week, and she sometimes brings a ball home.Also, our golf club is also bordered by a tennis club, and Callie’s friend Jeff, assistant greens keeper at the golf club, captures a tennis ball for her once in a while.
When Jeff gives Callie a tennis ball, it becomes her favorite possession for a few days. She keeps it separate from the other tennis balls, or, at least, she can tell which is the new one. She keeps it close, wherever she goes. And she will grab the newest ball and bring it to me for some “toss and fetch” play time.
Callie obviously loves her entire tennis ball collection — which is up to fourteen, now — but it’s easy to see how much pleasure she gets from the most recent addition.
We saw this again yesterday. We’re at Lake Arrowhead for the weekend, and as we walked along the shoreline toward our boat (which is about to come out of the water for the winter), I spotted a tennis ball floating in the “surf” (all three inches of it). I pointed Callie toward it, and she gleefully retrieved it and carried it around for the rest of the afternoon.
You can always tell when Callie has a new ball; she holds her head a little higher, and she hangs on a little tighter. If she needs to stop and rest for a minute, she puts it down (most of the time) in a place where it won’t roll away — which is not always easy to find in the mountains.
When we got back to our house, Callie dropped the ball at the front door entrance, only to watch it roll off the deck and fall into black oblivion. But, with a little detective work, we were able to find it, and I retrieved it and gave it back to her. Which led to more proud, head-held-high carrying of the new ball.
Having a new tennis ball is a little thing, but when you’re a “ball dog,” it can mean a lot. We should all take such pleasure from little things.
