I love chocolate! Not just for the taste and the variety available. Walk into your nearest chocolate shop and the whole world opens up to you, like Forest Gump said;
Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gunna get.
My box of chocolates runs around my backyard like a fanciful, frenzied fanatic. My box should have been born with a tennis ball in the left side of her mouth. It never seems to move, unless it’s in the air, waiting for her to jump, four feet off the ground, and catch it like an Australian Rules footballer, in the exact spot where it stays as she rests.
Rests? Huh, now there’s something she doesn’t do often. And when she does it’s for a moment, before she gets up, ball in mouth, and finds her ‘master’, for want of a better word, and chases him quietly, persistently, around the house until he gives in and says;
Okay, okay, I get it. It’s time to play ball
No, no, you misunderstand. Not baseball. Just ‘ball’. Up she flies, over she runs, there she stands, eyes looking up at me expectantly, as if there is nothing else in existence at that moment but the three of us – me, her, and the ball.
And not just any ball. It has to be a ‘real’ tennis ball. Thank God, across the way from my house there is a tennis club, where retirees go to freshen up on their not-so-perfect tennis.
Oh, once I was a star. Could beat anyone that challenged me to play
I hear one old retiree say to his ‘friends’ from time to time. Like me telling people I’m a millionaire, this ‘gentleman’ is not-so-believable. But one thing we can all believe is that he provides access to a club with an array of quality balls, of great use to my box of chocolates running and jumping in my backyard.
Feel that ball, see it bounce. Feels good in the hand, even better in the mouth. There she goes again, flying like a kite across the way, like a footballer jumping for a mark. Yet there’s just one difference. She’s better at it. Watching the football last night, the players dropped as many marks as they caught. My box of chocolates catches them all.
It’s just good luck, I hear you say. Aww, c’mon, she can’t possibly catch them all – she must drop the odd one.
Okay, so I lie. Yes, I’ll admit. She drops the odd one here and there. But I’d have her on my team any day. See, she has a benefit over us humans. She’s a dog. And there are numerous reasons they are better than us at ball-catching:-
- She is more agile – Dogs have a crazy amount of athletic ability
- She is far braver – Dogs put the task before themselves
- She has way better sensory perception – Dogs don’t take their eye off the ball
- She is more focussed – Given a task to perform, dogs will prove they are more focussed than humans on the task at hand
Couple this with the fact dogs are happier than us, smarter than children, and help keep us healthy, and it’s no wonder us dog-lovers are happy with our box of chocolates.
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