They say owning a dog’s good for your soul, and today I have a perfect example of why. Most afternoons, weather permitting, Soolin and I head out to the farmland behind my house and play fetch. I have one of those ‘chuckit’ sticks that look kind of like an atlatl that enables me to throw the ball 50 yards or more. Usually I have Soolin sit until I throw it, at which point she tears off after it. It’s her favorite thing on earth. Every now and then I let her run off without throwing the ball, and wait till she is 50 or more yards away, then issue a command like ‘sit’ or ‘down’ as a way to reinforce her training. She wants the ball so badly that she’ll do anything I ask in return for me tossing it.

So yesterday we head back to the field and after a few tosses I release her before throwing, wait till she is far away, then toss it as high as I can in the air. It was very windy and I had noticed the wind was carrying the ball so I figured I would toss it high to get it to go further than normal. Soolin loses sight of the ball and amazingly, it comes down right on her forhead, giving her a good soft bonk before bouncing away. This disorients her, and she barks once then proceeds to spin in circles trying to figure out what it was that bonked her. Or maybe she knew it was the ball and was just indignant, but either way I laughed for at least 5 minutes. I had to apologize to her when she finally came back with the ball. This little episode basically made my day.