Every night at almost exactly 10pm, Lucy gets the “rowdies”. Her extra energy reaches a boiling point and it then becomes necessary to exorcise/exercise the inner demons of her rambunctiousness. You could just about set a clock by this phenomenon.
She begins this ritual by jumping up from wherever she might be and looks at me with that look that only a dog can get…the one that says she’s trying to read my mind as to which toy of hers I will be the most impressed by, thereby inciting me to play.
I usually do not accept the first toy she brings over because I enjoy watching her try to bribe me. Invariably, the first toy will be her ball (she adores her ball above all other toys). When I am unmoved by her plea, she goes for her beloved skankie-blankie (pictured above), followed by “flying squirrel” (which started out lookin’ like this, but now looks like this). Next will be her rope, then her Big Mean Kitty, followed by Awful Mad Kitty, and sometimes, Dirty Rotten Kitty and yes…though she is color-blind as all dogs are supposed to be, she definitely knows the difference…then, well - you get the picture. She will quite literally empties her basket, building a toy shrine at my feet. All this time she’s “talking” to me in a series of chewed on growls and snorts with a couple of exasperated barks thrown in for good measure, though, they aren’t full blown barks because the toy she’s got in her mouth muffles them. Comes out sounding more like a “mumph!!” instead of an “ARF!” with her tail wagging in a crazy circle like a super-charged windmill. Over the years we have deciphered this particular wag to mean one thing, and one thing only. “Play?”
I hover my hand over the pile and watch her freeze in place, her tail motionless, her body completely stiff in total spring-ready mode. I so wish I could hear her thoughts at this point, lol. I’m quite sure they would involve several very choice four letter words.
Just when she’s positively quivering, tense beyond enduring…I’ll reach for her ball, her first choice (heh), and toss it straight up into the air where she neatly snatches it down only to yell at me for the next two or three minutes for taking so long. Then when she figures she’s tormented me long enough by keeping her favorite toy out of my reach, she’ll drop it front of me again and look at me with her tail gyrating in circle-wag loops behind her. ”Play?”
I love my dog.
