My Favorite Daughter and her boy have a puppy. Since losing Oreo and Tootsie over the past year, the new dog we had, Koda, was a little lonely. Well, the puppy they got is a shepherd/heeler mix. It’s an active dog. It doesn’t stop for anything. When they have it here at our house (instead of at the boy’s house) the new dog goes and goes and goes. She explores every inch of our back yard, digs holes, barks at people walking down the street, and then runs around some more.

The dogs we’ve always had have been smaller breed dogs. Therefore, smaller toys. Tootsie, back in the day, could pick up a full-sized tennis ball, but we’d gotten her smaller balls for her to play with as she got older. So we haven’t had full-sized tennis balls in a long time.

Mya, the new dog, in her explorations, has come back with a toy dinosaur, spider-man, rocks, branches. For the most part, all things that would be explained easily as toys the people who lived here before us had or things that fells from the tree.

Then she came inside with a plant. No, not a plant. A tennis ball with a plant growing out of it. This ball is old. It crunches when you squeeze it. I’ve no idea how long it’s been in the back yard. Neighbors on either side have dogs. Heck, most people down the street have dogs. None of them play fetch with their dogs. The people before us didn’t have dogs. The people before them didn’t have dogs. How long has this tennis ball been hiding in the back yard?

I mean, I’ve cleaned that yard several times over the years. Raking the leaves from the trees. Cleaning the flower beds. Pulling weeds. Moving things around to get at the hard to reach spots. I never ran across this tennis ball. I mean, I’d seen the plastic toys on the hill against the fence and /thought/ I’d picked them up at one point. Obviously I didn’t. But this ball? It’s a mystery.

I was tempted to plant it and see if it grows. Who knows. Maybe I will.

Until Next Time!

Stay Awesome!