Playing with a tennis ball

For our late afternoon walk, around 4:30, I usually take Olive behind the townhouses on the south and western ends of the complex we live in. There is a field beyond the western end that seems to be one of her favorite pooping spots. We also go behind a townhouse where two animal-loving ladies, Kim and Joy, live. Olive will stop there at their back deck looking for one of them to come out and throw a tennis ball for her to chase. Olive seems to really like them; I sometimes have a heck of a time getting her to move on if Kim and Joy are not home, or if they don’t come out. Olive is especially stubborn if the back door is open.

A few weeks back Joy took a video of Olive chasing the ball that Kim threw. Please comment so that I will know if you were or were not able to play the video.

 

 

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I make a point of brushing Olive every day. People often comment about how soft and shiny her coat is. I thought I was doing a fairly good job until yesterday. I left Olive at Candlewick while I went north to Massachusetts for a fiddle lesson. It had been some four months since Olive’s last bath, so I arranged for the groomer to give her one.

Fiddle lessons are usually on Tuesday afternoons, and I have a group of friends that typically meets on Tuesday nights for supper just north of Hartford. Since it makes little sense to fight the Hartford traffic on the way home and fight it again to get to supper, my usual Tuesday routine after dropping Olive off at Candlewick is to eat a sandwich at a small shopping mall food court on the way to my fiddle lesson, go for my lesson, then relax with coffee and a magazine at a café somewhere afterward before driving to supper. My sister is very helpful to pick up her “niece” before Candlewick closes and drop her off at home. I usually call around 6:00 to check up on Olive.

My sister reported that Olive had been bathed, got her usual glowing report from the staff, but that the groomer had noticed some matting problems. I make a point of brushing Olive every day, but the groomer noticed significant matting on her rear end, where I seldom brush. The groomer offered to shave it, but I decided to see what I could do to untangle her. When I got home it didn’t take long to find a large clump of matted fur under Olive’s tail. I didn’t think that I could untangle that no matter how long I worked at it, so I tried cutting off a little of the clump at a time with a pair of scissors. I figured that whatever I cut off would grow back after a while. This morning I found a smaller clump and did the same thing. It looked like quite a bit of hair in the wastebasket, but I cannot see any difference looking at her. It seems that I got all of the matting, but I will have to be careful to brush that area regularly, even though Olive is not all that fond of it (though she was well behaved and patient while I worked with the scissors).

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Olive seems to be of two minds about getting her teeth brushed. She seems to like the taste of the chicken flavored toothpaste, but is not very happy about my putting my fingers in her mouth. I get a few teeth every day, which I figure is better than nothing. Perhaps that and a daily “Denta-stick” (a doggie treat that claims to clean teeth) will allow her to keep her teeth into old age.