Lemon Fetch And Limping Dogs

There was a citrus tree in our back yard, dripping with lemons.

There was a small fluffy dog in our house, bursting with energy.

The small fluffy dog had two stuffed toys which his owners were quite clear were for indoor play only. We played vigorous games of indoor fetch with the small fluffy dog, pretending to throw the toy while he raced up and down the hallway searching for it.  Lacking traction on the bamboo floor, he struggled with rapid take-off, sudden changes of direction, and heavy braking.  We exploited this weakness for our own amusement.

Deprived of his toys while outdoors the small fluffy dog circled our chairs like a shark at feeding time, desperately bringing his indoor toys outdoors in the hope of playtime.  One day, tired of confiscating his indoor toys, I picked up a lemon from the collection on the table, and threw it to him.  "Play with that," I said.

And he did.

He played his own game of fetch, tapping the lemon with his nose, rolling it with his paws, and getting very disturbed when it hid under the barbecue or our chairs.  He demonstrated a superb understanding of  the game of Fetch With Humans, far surpassing any of the larger and allegedly more intelligent dogs we had previously minded.  Every so often one of his sharp little teeth pierced the lemon rind and he pranced around turning his little doggie face inside out and complaining of foul play by fruit. He developed a distinct yellow tinge to his moustache and a pleasant lemony tang to his doggie breath.

There were rules to Lemon Fetch, else he would not play.  The lemon must be fresh.  He wouldn't play with yesterday's beaten and slightly fermented lemon, preferring one fresh off the tree or at least the table. He developed a new rule to his game, hiding the lemon under the BBQ and then barking his little heart out at it, only to be dreadfully disappointed when Lemon Fetch was banned due to too much noise.

Banned from Lemon Fetch, the little fluffy dog took to pelting through the house on return from his walks, looking for whoever hadn't been walking with him that day. On one day, searching for Roger, he leapt onto the bed and took a flying  leap off again and next thing we knew there was yelping and wailing and LFD was convinced his leg was broken.

He lay whimpering on the couch while we faffed around him and messaged his owners, planning a trip to the vet and and reluctantly fessing up to having broken their dog. 

"Nah, don't worry about it!" They messaged back. "He'll be right, this happens all the time!"

Hmm, we thought, as we carried our sniveling bundle of fur out to the lawn for his night time nature visit. But sure enough the next morning LFD's dreadful disability lasted until breakfast time and then food wiped all pain from his little head and he was back on four legs again, albeit limping.

Much to his disgust we placed him on doggy light duties: no walks, no roaring up and down the hallway chasing his toys, no playing silly games with Roger and, alas, no Lemon Fetch. So now we had a bored fluffy dog with a limp, and bored is not a good thing for a fluffy dog to be. He quickly took  to chomping down on random items like hairbrushes and bottles of eye drops, something Roger found hilarious until SFD chomped down on his packets of digestive enzymes. "What am I going to do now?" Roger wailed, thoughts of gastric distress looming in his mind. "Bad dog!"

SFD was unrepentant. Do digestive enzymes hurt little dogs? I guess we'll find out.

The incident of the enzymes happened as we were heading out the door before sunrise to drop Roger at the airport. I shut all the internal doors, condemning SFD to a boring world of kitchen, living room, laundry, doggy door to outside, and limited chomping options.

"Behave yourself!" I said sternly.

Who knows what I'll find when I get back.