An Entry Of The Feathered, Furry Variety

This is brilliant but watching him struggle with that last five pounder made me wonder if he was thinking “shit I’ve bitten off a bit more than I can chew here ……”

Hunting Osprey

Trooper would make a good osprey.  He hangs on to things like grim death unable to let go for whatever secret reason lurks down deep inside his wee self.

We used to throw frisbees, balls, sticks, whatever for him in the field behind the house but although he’s always absolutely delighted if he thinks he’s going to fetch something, once caught it doesn’t get laid down for a repeat process.  I spent ages training him to ‘drop’ ‘leave’ ‘stay’ so that we could pick up whatever it was and throw it again and after what seemed like forever he would get the hang of it and off we would go into a delightful frenzy of throwing, catching and dropping.

Once he got into the swing of it, he would do it for as long as you let him and appeared to completely love it but as soon as we went back out the next day none of it was remembered and we’d have to start all over again.  Several times we gave up then would feel super-guilty and try it again for a while but it never appeared to progress.

I hit on the idea one day of using two sticks to see what he would do.  Throw one then when he’d retrieve it, throw another.

The dilemma!

The anguish!

I almost felt rotten that I was causing him so much stress.

Finally after mooching about on the ground for ages he turned to face me and I fell about laughing.  His mouth stretched to the max, both sticks poked out of it as he stood panting as though to say ‘I can’t – I just can’t – this is the only way I can deal with it’.

Poor boy.

However came one lovely day he suddenly dropped the first and picked up the second and we had a great half hour of alternating between the two.

I thought I’d cracked it.

Next day back to Square One again ……

Last week in an open grassy area with plenty of loose sticks lying about, I tried again only to have him almost dislocate his jaw in the attempt to get 3 corkers in his mouth thus:

I tried throwing another one and unbelievably he tried to get that one in as well but had to give up.

Game over.

Meanwhile Snarf desperately tries to win Bailey round.

Bailey’s a hard nut to crack.

Snarf took solace in being the sole occupant of my body at teatime and we came to an arrangement whereby I could actually eat my tea at the same time.

Then Willow got all lonely after Nikki and Lily moved out so he muscled in ……

…… and the arrangement had to get readjusted somewhat.

However Snarf is using all his body parts to make progress on the Bailey Resistance Front.

And it seems to be working.

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