My Silly Dog

I thought I should pull myself away from my mountain of housing re-cert paperwork and share something fun about Thane.

Thane has never been a dog with gusto confidence when it comes to getting his ball out of tight spots. Met was a lot this way and in time he developed major confidence in this so I had/ have no doubts with Thane. Thane's seems to be impacted by taking meds also. It does not seem to impact his work in public and when its necessary he will definitely retrieve things for me that are harder to get at, but there's always been this side to him and probably always will be to some extent.

There is one thing that I find absolutely silly, hilarious, create your own adjective for the scenario if you want after reading about it.

I live in an apartment set up (or at least in many ways set up) for a person in a wheelchair. They definitely thought that all people in wheelchairs have someone else cook and bake for them, but that's a whole other topic. Instead of a bath tub we have a large roll in shower. It sort of slopes to the drain so as to not flood the bathroom. As a result of this slope, Thane's ball always seems to find its way down to the drain.

I wash and hang my laundry in this shower so often times there are those *close confines* that Thane is not so comfortable with. By morning when I am removing the clothes from the line, there can be anywhere from one to five balls down at the drain level of the shower because someone would run get one from *toys* when he lost a ball rather than asking me to *encourage* him past the laundry, fan, and other paraphenalia.

Each morning after I have put the laundry away, Thane comes to retrieve the balls for me. Most dogs would walk down there, retrieve the ball in their mouth and bring it to you- right? Not Thane. From the very first time I had him go down into the shower to get a ball for us, I had to hold back my laughter. Thane is a very long dog, twenty-seven inches collar to base of tail. He walks down into the shower part way, stretches as far as possible, then nudges the ball to roll towards him. He does this all the way to the edge where the shower meets up with the bathroom linoleum flooring. At this point, he whips around and proudly produces the ball in my hand. It is so hilarious. Try as I might to train him to actually retrieve the ball at the drain position and walk back to me with his ball in his mouth- it just aint ever happening! This is the only toy he treats this way, the only place its treated this way and its just downright fun to experience.

You might ask why I find this fun, silly, hilarious- oh its because it is different than Met. It is different than any other dog I have ever read about. It is just a part of who he is and well- that makes it special in my book.