Fergus Teases Taffie the Golden Retriever
You might not know Taffie - she's a Golden Retriever dog - a big golden color with a super long tail that never stops wagging unless she's sick. (If she's sick, her nose gets all warm and dry, her ears droop, her tail stops wagging and she lies down out somewhere) But if she's not sick, then she's a bouncing bundle of energy that plays and plays and plays.
One of Taffie's favourite toys is a squeaky ball. She'll pick it up in her mouth and toss it as high in the air as she can (you try that with a ball sometime and see how far you can toss a ball from your mouth). Then she pounces on it - it squeaks and she tosses it again. Sometimes, she'll pick it up in her mouth and sometimes she'll jump on it with her paws. But she loves to hear that ball squeak.
And whenever you want to play with Taffie, you simply pick up the ball and squeak it. She'll come barreling around corners, skidding on the shiny floors, heading to that squeak as fast as she can. You can almost hear her saying "squeaky ball, squeaky ball, oh boy! oh boy!" as she runs as fast as she can under tables, around chairs and over cushions to get to you and that ball.
But Taffie isn't very good at sharing things. Once she gets that ball squeaking, she doesn't want to give it back. She'll tease you and toss the ball - grabbing it before you can and she almost never loses that ball. Even when I try my hardest, she can outrun me and outsqueak me.
Well, Fergus (he's getting pretty old and grumpy lately) gets tired of hearing that ball squeak. And the more Taffie squeaks it, the grumpier Fergus gets.
So when Fergus has had enough squeaking, he'll yell (and he can yell kinda loud for a frog) at Taffie and tell her to "Taffie - Sit!". Taffie's a good dog and well-trained and when she hears her name and a command to sit - she does it (or she does it most of the time) Sometimes she won't hear Fergus yelling "Sit!" and she'll keep squeaking. Then we've got a lot of squeaking and a lot of frog-yelling going on and it can get really noisy.
Once Fergus has Taffie sitting, he'll waddle over and kick the ball under a couch or chair where poor Taffie can't get it. Then he'll go back in the peace and quiet to resume his nap or whatever he was doing. Taffie of course has been told to sit and she's just watched her favourite toy kicked under the couch so she's not very happy.
One day after Fergus had kicked the ball under the couch, Taffie gave him a swat with her big paw. She kinda stepped on him and swatted him at the same time. Fergus was so surprised that when all his air left him, he kinda squeaked. He didn't have any air left to tell Taffie to "Sit!" again, and that was all Taffie needed.
Her squeaky ball wasn't around but here was this other "toy" that squeaked almost as well. So Taffie picked Fergus up in her mouth and tossed him in the air. When he landed, she pounced on Fergus just like she did with her ball. Fergus squeaked! Taffie picked him up and tossed him again. And again Fergus squeaked. I think this time he squeaked in fright because Taffie was now tossing him straight up and catching him in her big mouth full of big teeth. But Fergus kept on squeaking and Taffie kept on tossing and having a great time with her new toy.
Fergus didn't like being a toy.
The first thing I heard was Fergus calling my name in a squeaky, scared voice so I ran to the porch to see what was going on and started to laugh when I saw Fergus flying through the air and Taffie - her big tail wagging, and her big eyes laughing, was playing catch with this squeaky frog.
I laughed and I laughed. And the more I laughed, the madder Fergus got. But Taffie kept right on tossing him in the air and making him squeak.
He got so mad, he yelled "TAFFIE SIT!" at the top of his lungs when he was about 5 feet in the air.
Taffie sat.
And Fergus fell with a huge, frog-splat on the tile floor of the porch right in front of a sitting golden retriever with a wagging tail.
I got Taffie's ball out from under the couch and made her happy.
I picked up Fergus, gave him a heating pad to warm up his aching muscles to make him happy. Put him back to bed and listened to him grumble about how he was going to make that dog's life miserable from now on.
But how he tried and how Taffie got him back are stories for another night.
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