On Dog Toys

Recently, our dog Geordie La Forge (a/k/a Chief, a/k/a Senator, a/k/a Sneezy Boy, a/k/a Dipshit) came into possession of a squeaky hedgehog. The last time he had a squeaky hedgehog was the day we brought him home from the shelter, and he utterly destroyed the poor thing in less than 24 hours. There were bits of fabric and fluff and plastic and dog slobber all over the place. As a consequence of the hedgehog’s hasty demise, me and my dog never got into any sort of play routine with it. It was his, all his, and then it was dead.

In the intervening months, my dog and I learned to play a few games with each other. This was harder than it sounds – we also got a squeaky bouncy ball the day when we adopted him, and by the end of the week we were trying to get him to play fetch with it. It sort of worked, but not really – we would toss the ball across the living room, and then he would bring it back, so then we would toss the ball across the room a second time, and then…nothing. He would look up at us as if to ask, “The fuck did you do that for?”, and that was it.

While fetch consistently proved to be a non-starter, Geordie took to rope tug immediately, and we waged hundreds of rope battles. But the problem with that was that he turned every other toy he had into a toy to play tug with. Squeaky ball? That’s a tug game. Plastic bone? Also a tug game. Oversized squeaky alligator? Once again, this is a tug game. After tug games built up his attention span, he finally got wise to how fetch works.

So now he has a new squeaky hedgehog, and he brings it up to me as if to play fetch with it, and I’ll toss it across the room, and despite the fact that he plays fetch now, when I try and play it with the squeaky hedgehog he plays along for maybe a round or two, then looks at me like I’m completely nuts, and I don’t know what to do. My wife has suggested that I’m not supposed to play fetch with it, rather, I am to accept it as a gift or tribute of some kind. Uh…sure. I mean, I don’t want that shit, it’s covered in dog slobber. Just what I’m supposed to do with the hedgehog remains a mystery.

What’s the point of this story, you ask? There is none. Later!