Observations on Ts playing ball

It's official: I put down grass seed and straw mats. The Ts are out of the puppy pen now until the end of April--unless I have to reseed, when it will be a little longer. Cross your fingers for us--this poor little patch of ground gets some heavy use, as well as being shaded at various times of the day, and it's HARD to keep grass growing in it. If I had the money, I'd take down the maple at the corner of the garage, the green ash by the backdoor, and the scraggly but tall lilac bush at the end of the driveway--they're the main culprits, at least as far as shade goes. The maple and the evil honeysuckle trees back there have roots popping out of the ground, so the poor grass is also fighting tree roots. It's a hard life.

At any rate, I'll have to keep the Ts busy for the next 6 weeks. Walking seems like the obvious choice, except I'm so tired all the time. One thing I can do is throw a tennis ball in the house--if I sit in the right spot on the couch, I can throw through the living room, through the kitchen, and into the back hall (small house). So they chase it, and also they get rewarded with a ball pitched directly to them for doing things--sit, down, speak, touch with nose, touch with paw, turn a touch-lamp on and off, touch sticky notes with their noses, sit up, spin, twirl. Useless kinds of things, mostly, but I like them to use their brains a little.

Taenzer, I notice, gets the ball a lot, not only because she's Head Dog, but also because she watches *me*. She watches where I'm looking, what my hands are doing, my posture--so she can guess where I'm about to throw. Timber gets so fixated on the ball that he doesn't realize I'm getting ready to throw it until it's in the air, and by that time Taenzer's already beat him to the landing point.

I think I'll put a big piece of plastic lattice across the front porch steps and try working them out on the front porch--basic stuff, sit, down, stay, heel, freestyle stuff for Taenzer. There's more going on out front, so it'll be a good first step in distraction proofing.

I've got to get a picture of Taenzer sitting up. She's SO adorable. Since she's longer-backed and narrower than Timber, who has a wide bottom and sits up like a squirrel, she has to kind of work at keeping her balance, get her back feet positioned exactly right, and hold her front feet in close to her chest--it's SO cute. Timber sits up like a squirrel, completely steady, front legs dangling down--he could sit like that all day, I guess, and when he's excited will often do it spontaneously to get his collar put on.

I hope this grass and netting thing works. Ack. Well, if it doesn't, I'll have a mess to clean up.