#Go fetch that ball

[zappedbyzabka]

I’ve seen a lot of werewolf Johnny, which is quite cute, but what about werewolf Daniel?

[thatdoggirl29]

Played fetch for the first time with my human bf, and I think I finally found a reason to exist....ooohhh my goood the game has CHANGED

[laurearte]

Ouais euh les pyramides la Crète tout ça (?)

(two kids… both lonely in their own ways…)

[muffinlance]

Interest Check: Isopuppy Plushies

Anyone interested in buying isopuppy plushies?

Either as a pattern or actual sewn-by-me toys. Because I have crocheted So Many Toys over my children, and I am thinking it's time to go back to sewing for awhile, but I should also stop rampantly making toys without homes to send them to. So. Casual interest check. I am absolutely making one for myself; this just determines if I should go through the effort of making an actual pattern so I can replicate the process.

[pisspurveyor]

yeah hey why does Gale have a squeaky ball in his tent setup and why doesn't he run after the ball if I just so happen to throw it????

[its-all-been-said]

Sometimes the corgi gets to play with his beloved tennis balls, as a treat

[puppybraineddd]

my gf was trying to make me grab their phone for them and tauntingly said "so go on. go fetch." and i froze

[rambling-robot]

Played with the neighbor’s puppy because I was outside reading and she was crying and I’m a huge softie

+ 30 happy points

- 5 health

+ 8 bleeding damage

[dreamties]

obviously since I have a new fixation I need to write regression fics for it soon !!!

i've been thinking a lot about Sissy as a caregiver <:O She would be really sweet and caring. she is one of the only family members I would trust with a little reader 😭 she'd be great with helping to keep ya out of trouble <333

or !!!! Johnny with a reader that pet regresses has my heart in a clutch hold

like i need to be able to curl up like a lil pup on Johnny's lap while he reads a book or sharpens his knife. or if we're outside on the porch maybe he's whittling and his lil pup is on the ground next to him, nuzzling at his leg. he keeps such a good eye on em !!!! <333

[nonuggetshere]

Unbothered, moisturized, in her lane

[noraqrosa]

oh i guess i really am a puppygirl, last night a friend essentially told me to go fetch (i.e. "get me this entire artist's discography") and i immediately spent the rest of my night complying like the good li'l hunting dog i guess i am

life is weird sometimes

[twogriffons]

sending updates while dogsitting is funny, like

"here's how much your dog doesnt miss you"

[the-best-bagel]

free roaming outdoor dogs a la cats are not a good idea and are just asking for injuries and conflict but unfortunately i've only ever had great experiences growing up in a neighborhood with a handful of those dogs and i miss themmmmm

[emphistic]

Toji hasn't been able to kiss you in ages, and it's not far fetched to say he's starting to go insane.

"So," you began, taking a seat on the armrest of the sofa where your boyfriend sat, "how's your day going—so far? How are you feeling?"

"Homicidal."

You laugh, and ask if there's a reason for that, but you already know why.

"Your son—"

"Our son, Toji."

"Doesn't feel like he's my kid when he's bein' the worst fucking cockblocker of the century." Toji snapped his head to the side to meet your eyes, and his scowl deepened ever so slightly at the sight of you—the can of soda in his hand got crushed within seconds.

"C'mon, honey, he's just a baby. And you know how babies are."

"Yeah, I do. Whiny little assholes that can't be alone for a second before they start cryin' for their mothers. I know you pushed him out of your vagina . . . or something, but he needs to know I had to push him out of my balls before any of that was even possible."

"Toji!" you scream-laugh, before clasping a hand over your mouth, wary of the fact that a baby was sleeping just down the hall.

"Okay, okay, that was a joke. But still," Toji murmured, "I can't really say I haven't missed you these past few days, because I have."

"Awh, Toji, baby," you began, rubbing his shoulder, "I've missed you, too! We should totally call Shiu—let him know his babysitting services are needed." You squealed, "You are such a cutie, Toji. You missed me?!"

"Uh huh, I've missed you," mumbled Toji, before he began to quietly add, under his breath: "and so have my balls, which have been real freakin' heavy recently."

[foldingfittedsheets]

The dog I think of as My Dog was picked up from the shelter when I was about 16 and he was six months old. He was a cattle dog mix, which at the time was really uncommon in our area.

We were only getting a dog because my mom was worried about home invaders which was a bit insane as we were out in the country and we’d left our German Shepherd down in Arizona with my dad for complicated reasons.

I turned the corner and saw him. Instant connection. He was curled up dozing, all blue and white freckles with red ears and feeties. His clipboard said “SLY” in huge red letters. I called it softly and he opened his eyes, ears perking. He roused to sleepily amble toward me, lick my fingers, then go lay back down.

My mom joined me in dismay, seeing the love dripping off of me. She hadn’t wanted a puppy but it was clear which dog we were going home with.

Sly was a monstrous puppy. Fans of cattle dogs will be unsurprised to learn he was exceedingly clever, mischievous and Bored a Lot. It turned out his name hadn’t been Sly. It was Billy. But I think we all know why a huge red warning had been applied to his kennel. We named him Sly anyway.

My mom doesn’t remember threatening in earnest to bring him back but it happened. Sly loved to chew. He had no interest in fetch or most toys but he adored chewing. I lost headphones, backpack straps, and pillows to his voracious teething. We tried to dissuade him. He just learned to chew when we weren’t looking. Then one day, clever but not smart, he set his teeth to a plugged in cord and electrocuted himself. He was fine, just really startled!

Thus ended the chewing, forever.

He wouldn’t even pick up toys. He was fully convinced having things in his mouth was only a matter of time before they turned on him. He’d run after a ball at dog parks, grab it in the euphoria of the chase, then immediately spit it out.

He was still a lot of dog and my moms rumblings about his poor behavior led me to join 4H with him. My friend Lia was in with her spaniels so I had an in. We did twice weekly training in obedience and showmanship.

That was it. Sly transformed into the best dog. From a bored unmanageable puppy he became a partner, ready to work on whatever we needed to work on. He learned buckets of commands, eager to please. Sit, down, wait, stand, front, back up, shake, roll, heel. The only thing we could never convince him to do was speak. His bark was reserved for Danger.

We went to compete in the county fair together, entering obedience trials and dog show portions.

The instructions are clearly stated before obedience testing. A dog must stay sitting for two minutes when told to stay, and three minutes for laying down. If our dog broke we were not supposed to speak to reissue commands, simply wait quietly.

It was us in a line with five other dogs. He passed the sitting part just fine. The down one was longer and a wretched golden retriever broke. But then his trainer pulled out a ball and started trying to redirect him with it. The other dogs watched with interest but stayed down. Sly started up. He desperately wanted to herd the golden back into place.

With elbows off the ground he froze, realizing his mistake. His head whipped to me. In silence, I swept my arm down in the nonverbal command for down. He dropped obediently and watched me fixedly for the rest of the time. I think he could feel my disappointment.

We failed.

But the judge came up to us afterward as I was petting him and said, “I was so impressed your dog knows nonverbal commands, and that other dog was so distracting! Let’s retest with the next batch.”

I was thrilled and Sly was steadfast, staring unblinkly at me for the full three minutes with utter determination. He won blue ribbons in obedience and got later best in breed since there was no other cattle dogs.

[phantomrose96]

So my mom's birthday was this week and I flew down with Patches to visit her for a few days. Patches, while a verified hater of the airport, really loves my mom's place because there are so many more closets to explore and birds to watch and cobwebs to dust with her stupid little face.

My mom also goes to bed earlier than anyone I know, so for the evenings it was on me to monitor Patches' activity. And she's very good. She's 99% good. She's 1% "could use improvement" good and the 1%, which I'd forgotten about, is tomatoes.

Patches will leave most things alone. (And by "alone" I mean she'll absolutely bitch slap them onto the floor, but they will leave the ordeal with just as many or few surface punctures as they had before the encounter started.) Not tomatoes. Patches has it the fuck out for tomatoes.

So when I noticed her batting something around on the ground I realized that my mom had left a sole, roma tomato in the fruit basket on the counter and it was now experiencing the life cycle of a pingpong ball between Patches' paws.

I take it away from her, like a fucking evil woman, and now I'm like "okay actually, where do I hide this." See at home I have an anti-Patches cabinet, which is for things that have no business living in a cabinet but which WILL have business dying at Patches' hands if left accessible. And this is WEIRD to have such a cabinet but it's my own home.

I'm scanning my mother's cabinets going "is this weird here? can the tomato go in my mother's dish cabinet?" And I briefly consider sticking it in the fridge, as a normal location, but the audacity of altering this tomato's ripening process is an audacity I do not possess. So I go with cabinet. I go with the first eye-level cabinet, which is the coffee mug cabinet, which is perfect because the tomato will not be lost to cabinet purgatory there, since my mom opens it every morning for her coffee. I will simply tell her in the morning that the tomato is there.

Next morning. Seeing as my mother goes to bed at the butt-crack of dusk she ALSO gets up at the ass-crack of dawn. This means I trail down like 2 hours after her with my work laptop and Patches. This is also now her birthday. I'm sharing the sofa with her for a good 15 minutes when I think to myself I'd like some coffee, and I remember I put a tomato in the cabinet. I tell my mom as much. I put the tomato in her coffee mug cabinet.

And the look I get is one I can't really figure out on spot. But she says "Chrissy this is the best birthday present you could have given me" which is a very weird response to the already weird statement "Oh you probably saw, but I hid the tomato in the coffee mug cabinet because Patches has it out for tomatoes."

So I do not at all know how this makes for a good birthday gift. My mom tells me how a week or two ago, she came home unloading groceries. At the end of putting everything away she could not for the life of her find her phone. Absolutely nowhere. She pinged it from her iPad and it started singing. From the fridge. She opened her fridge. Her phone was in the fridge.

A couple days later she lost Ash's collar. Spent three days looking for it. Couldn't remember where she'd taken it off or what she did with it. Showed up in the grass when she remembered she took it off to let him play fetch in the lake.

And then this morning, her birthday morning, she came into the kitchen, made her pot of coffee, opened the cabinet to fetch her coffee mug, and found... tomato. Singular. Tomato in the cabinet. Tomato she had no memory of placing in a cabinet. Tomato she could not possibly fathom having a reason for being in the cabinet.

She was like Chrissy I cried. She was like this is it, time to send her to pasture. She's a harebrained old lady now and there is no coming back from this. She's the lady who accidentally puts tomatoes in the cabinet. Awake before God, standing in the kitchen, signing her life away over this tiny roma tomato. (Roma tomato with little cat vampire teeth marks in it).

I was like oh. No. I put it there. Because Patches was going to commit war crimes against it. I put it there because I did not stop to consider "Will finding a single tomato in the coffee mug cabinet somehow be the very specific thing that undoes my mother this morning?" I put it there out of careful consideration for the life of this tomato, and with no consideration for the extremely esoteric way that a tomato in the cabinet could be received like a horse head in the bed, Godfather style.

We made a salad with the tomato. Happy birthday Mom.