Playtime The university I’m with shuts down for 10 days over the Christmas –New Year holiday because we don’t take any of the other national holidays during the year. This is fine because it forces me to not go to work. (Okay, I bring some home, but don’t tell Leigh). And every year for the past 30 years I make out a list of things I want to get done, books I want to read, stories I want to write and movies I want to watch. This year, as in the past 30, I accomplished none of them. But this year it was okay. I think this was the first year I realized that this forced vacation is supposed to be a vacation, and it was. I had time to spend with Kim who went to a lot of trouble and expense to fly in from Alaska . We had a chance to see Nathan’s band, Push Dawn, perform, which I talk about in the News sections. I was forced to work on computers, both hardware and software. At one point, I had four hooked up, each in some state of disrepair, working on each one and getting very frustrated. I’m not a computer geek. Whatever work I do on them, I do it once every couple years, forget everything I learned, and start over again. I also had a lot of time to play with the dogs. We have two, a German Shepherd, Zeus, and Tyler, an Australian Blue Heeler. The blue heeler is not a real common species. Heelers are high energy, really smart dogs, and bred to nip at the heels of cattle to round them up. This means they are aggressive, prone to wanting order (“get a move on, Bessie,” nip nip. . .”to the left Daisy” nip nip). Some heelers even try to round up people using the same heel nipping. Because of this hereditary tendency, they don’t do well with other dogs. Most dogs know instinctively, whether playing or in an emergency, the ancient plan is to go for the throat. They are totally confused when this little dog starts nipping at their heels. How in hell do you play with a dog that has the rules backwards? Fortunately, Tyler ’s passion is playing ball. He catches it, brings it back and waits like a baseball catcher for the next pitch.
Zeus, on the other hand, is huge, energetic and pretty straight-minded. All he wants is for you to throw the ball as far as you can so he can run as fast as he can and retrieve it. Zeus’ problem is that he’s really anal about the ball. He won’t drop it. He won’t let go of it. We’ve tried everything to teach him to drop it but on the rare occasion that he does, as soon as you reach for it, he lunges and grabs it. The problem with prying the ball out of his clamped jaw is that he manufactures some type of saliva that’s as slimy and impermeable a substance I’ve ever experienced. Once it’s on your hands you can’t get it off. I’ve tried soap. I’ve tried grease cutter. I’ve tried a blow torch. I give up and wipe it on my jeans. When Zeus was a cute, clumsy puppy seeking security, we’d let him slide in between our legs where he felt he had protection. He was content just to stand there being protected and watching Tyler catch the ball. Now Zeus is a couple feet high and is 80 pounds of solid muscle. When Zeus wants to get between your legs, there’s 80 pounds of muscle, with a head as hard as a battering ram and a long narrow nose. He slides in like a big fur-covered chisel. Try to stop him and he turns your legs into a large wedgy. So I find myself standing in the driveway with 80 pounds of dog between my legs drizzling saliva and waiting for me to toss the ball to Tyler. It is always in the back of my mind not to do anything that would excite Zeus and cause him to jump, or—God forbid – raise his head quickly. Ah, well, it adds an element of danger to an otherwise predictable game of catch. Tyler drops the ball, I bend over with Zeus following between my legs, pick up the ball, toss. . . and
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