Tennis for Dogs

I considered naming this post "Tennis. Doggie Style" but imagine the various related google keyword searches I'd have to see every time I checked my stats...

Yeti can run ridiculously fast. Especially when he's escaping into the woods, which he's done several times this week, leaving J and I calling his name in the happiest sounding voices we can muster and trudging along the path with a bag full of all-natural doggie treats. One morning I took him out on a leash (not an ideal situation for such an exuberant dog), only to have it mysteriously fall off halfway through our woods walk.

"Yeti!" I screamed in a panic as he quickly realized his freedom and bolted away, bounding over fallen trees and whizzing to and fro, a little white blur of potential coyote snack tearing through the trees.

He sprinted teasingly back to me several times ("good boy! good come! here's a treat!") then darted away again ("damn!") before I could grab him. Finally I decided to start to jogging back towards the house with Vixen circling me nervously. Yeti, perhaps unable to control his instinct to herd his suddenly-running-away-pack, rushed around and around and tore past us, beating us to the door.

Vixen is still the alpha of the dog household, which she reminds Yeti of by holding him down and nibbling him like a corn cob several times a day. She's probably wondering how long this play date is going to last (until the weekend, actually). I don't think she's noticed that Yeti has wormed his way into sleeping on the bedroom rug unless she heard J and I thrashing around and screaming "what the hell is that?!" when he tried to jump on the bed at 4 in the morning. I think poor Yeti was as surprised as we were by the sudden ruckus.

There haven't been a lot of dull moments with this little guy around, which is fine by me.