Mayan ball game, or, Maya gets specific.

When Maya first came home, her interest in toys was negligible. Her interest in fetch (or any other interactive toy game) was zero. So we built a game of fetch from the ground up.

First, we experimented with different balls. There was one that could be filled with treats, one that had ridges to be filled with peanut butter, and one that squeaked. Forget the food...squeaking was the way to go. Squeaky toys became Maya's great interest, and we slowly built that into a respectable game of fetch.

Maya and the squeaky ball:


Somewhere along the line, the ball stopped squeaking. This is because Maya slammed all 65 lbs of her weight onto it one too many times and the squeaker broke. No problem, because by this point the itself was the prize. But after a few hundred (thousand?) more full-body pounces, the seams started to split. So I went out and bought a new ball.

A new ball?

CRISIS!!

The first few times I held the new ball, she jumped around with excitement and chased after it vigorously. Until her mouth touched it, at which point she'd recoil in horror, abandon all pursuit, and come running back to look at my hands for signs of the real ball. After the first few times, she got wise and quit chasing altogether.

It is true that the new ball is not identical to the first one. It is slightly smaller and bouncier. Also, it glows in the dark. But it is not the abomination that Maya claims.

Maya and the new ball:


Notice how she can barely even bring herself to look at it? That's how awful she thinks the new ball is.

After two days of hard work, we have reached a stand-off. Maya will chase and return the new ball if we are in the dining/living room or if we are in the back yard. But not the sun room (which is where we play fetch during big storms or on extremely cold days...of which we've had a lot lately). The sun room is for the real ball only, thanks.

This is typical Maya. Rules that work for one room are not assumed to apply to other rooms. She takes note of everything that I do and assumes it is highly relevant, even if it isn't (or is in a very different way). For example, I like to sit on the floor in the sun room while we play fetch, because it saves me the trouble of bending over to pick up the ball 1000 times (lazy, I know). Which makes Maya think that me sitting on the floor is an essential part of sun room fetch. If I stand up, she immediately lies down because she thinks the game is over.

I have no way of explaining to her that sitting down is something I do for comfort, not a part of the game, except to show her by my actions. So I take care to play a certain percentage of our fetch games while standing up (oh, the effort). Similarly, I'd like to explain to her that fetch is a game that can be played with any spherical, bouncy object of about the right size. Or so I thought.

Maya and the real ball and some other ball nobody cares about:


But just as I get completely frustrated with all these meaningless (to me) differentiations, I wonder why it matters so much to me that she generalize. Generalization is a skill I'd like Maya to learn, because it will lead to better coping skills (more about Maya's behavior issues later). But does she really need to learn to generalize about balls? So what if she only likes the green squeaky kind that I have to special order because the local pet store doesn't carry them (*sigh*). There's no particular reason she absolutely needs to learn to play with different kinds of balls, at least as long as JW continues to manufacture the kind she likes. Perhaps I'm being just as frustratingly arbitrary as she seems to be.

Maybe I should try to think of the upsides to this. For example, Maya does not fetch all spherical objects, which means she does not constantly seek out tennis balls, rotting oranges, gourds, or other found objects on our hikes in order to thrust them upon me. If I want to stop playing fetch, it's as simple as putting the ball away. Not every dog owner can say the same. Maybe I should just try to be glad that Maya is being so good about communicating her preferences.

Besides, it's just a ball.



Update: A few days later, and the new ball is finally becoming a part of our play. The secret was to play with the new ball in the living room and back yard, then to take it away. Less access leads to higher value, especially when I make a point of holding the new ball, having the new ball in my lap, tossing the new ball from hand to hand, and otherwise imparting a kind of rarity, interest, and value to it. So far, so good!