This is the Object of my Consternation

I couldn’t help myself, or the result

The most prized possession of any canine that fancies himself/herself an athlete. The attachment is like a security blanket is to an infant. Old faithful, a stinky, smelly, chewed up tennis ball.

Yes, I’m talking about my dog again, but this time with a twist.

The other day as luck would have it, I had just finished reading a very entertaining article from my pal, Liam Ireland. As I hope you will see for yourself, Liam was lamenting the trials and tribulations of living with a partner whose mother tongue is different from his own. This very amusing piece appeared rather serendipitously on this particular day.

After a good chuckle and a note to the author, I set out about my day behind the wheel of my own storytelling journey. That’s a longwinded way of saying I had some writing of my own to do.

But, I will tell you right now, my dear friend Liam, a language barrier is not the only thing that brings absurdity to the forefront of a loving relationship. Sometimes partners are just, plain goofy.

When writing for a client, I generally like to put on my headphones and listen to some ‘Cool’ jazz or classical music. As the dulcet tones reverberate softly in my ears, I’m better able to concentrate on some of the more mundane writing I do to earn my keep.

I’d settled in nicely to the work at hand on an unusually delightful November morning. The sun shone brightly and the temperature was steadily rising into the low 20c range, which for Americans is upward of 68f. My wife had gone out back to collect some more of the endless stream of fallen leaves. All was in my favour to get some quality work done. Until…

Suddenly, over the music, I heard my wife’s voice calling out to me from the back door. “Stuart, could you come out here, please?”

I knew it had something to do with the dog, but obey my I must, so out I went. She ushered me over to the side property fence where the Cock-a-poo was busily digging a hole to get into the neighbour’s yard. She had created a six-inch well in the earth by the fencepost.

“It’s her ball”, my wife said, “Somehow, it got on the other side of the fence and she’s become obsessed.” Sure enough, the creature had sniffed out an errant orb, lying just out of reach on the other side of the fence. I guess her dog brain had devined that digging a tunnel would be the solution to collecting her prize. You have to give the species credit for ingenuity and instinct.

Now, my dog’s OCD is nothing unusual to me anymore, but I dutifully went over to investigate. The fence in question is over six feet high, made from pressure-treated lumber set in alternating slats. They’re very common in our part of the world, and between each slat, there’s barely enough room for my wife’s tiny hand to slip through.

Kneeling to inspect the situation, I quickly discovered that there was no way for me to recapture that ball. What’s more, when I looked down at Guinness, she had a bright yellow tennis ball laying right beside her. Of course, that makes little difference to a dog that thinks every ball in existence, belongs to them.

So, here I am now on my knees in a pile of leaves, with my darling bride making suggestions on how to retrieve this ball. We won’t even discuss if it belonged to the dog or not. “Let me get a stick and I think I can drag it closer to get my hand in”, she says.

“Ok”, I reply patiently, “Assuming you accomplish that feat, how do you propose to get the ball between the slats?”

“Oh, I can pull it through then. No problem.”

She’s dug in now, and so is the dog, and naturally, I’m expected to follow. Look, I’m not saying we’re old by any stretch, but at 61, the last thing I expect to be doing at this point in my life, is to be lying in a bed of leaves trying to bring a two-and-a-half-inch sphere through a one-inch gap.

“Honey”, I say with a little hesitation, “why don’t I just go over and knock on the neighbor’s door, and ask them if I can go in their backyard and get the ball?”

“Are you nuts?”, she says, “That would be so embarrassing.”

“That’s embarrassing?”, I ask. “More than two seemingly mature and intelligent people lying in a pile of leaves and muck with a dog’s nose pressed in for good measure? That isn’t embarrassing at all.”

Well, we both fell into hysterical laughter. If the neighbour had seen us, they likely would have called for the men in white coats to take us away. I can hear them saying, “We always knew there was something odd about those two.”

In the end, I managed to lure the dog away from the fence with the other, retrievable ball. Her ball. You know, something shiny, and off she goes in the chase.

I bring Guinness indoors finally, where she probably dreamt about that damned ball for the rest of the day. Trust me. Dogs don’t forget. The moment I let her out again, she went straight for the fence. So for the remainder of daylight, we spent half our time distracting the mutt from the single item that consumed her thoughts.

My wife spent the entire evening devising clever ways to extract the ball. My favourite had something to do with a glue-like substance on cardboard, at the end of a pole. It’s hard to sleep when you can’t stop giggling.

The next morning, I grabbed my coffee and headed for the back door with Guinness in tow. And lo and behold, when we got to the fence, two tennis balls were sitting proudly on the leaves. Whether it was the kindness of our neighbour or the…ingenuity of my wife, I didn’t bother to ask how the ball suddenly appeared.

I was too embarrassed to find out.

As always, thanks for taking the time. Dr. Mehmet Yildiz Terry Mansfield Tree Langdon Myriam Ben Salem Agnes Laurens Britni Pepper Jessica Cote