delirium

I made my dog deliriously happy this morning.  Emphasis on the delirium, because I used the B-A-L-L.  Yes, we have to spell it out, and now it seems Maya is learning to spell, so we may need to find some other word entirely (she can also spell D-O-G and M-A-Y-A, which is making it harder and harder to talk about her without her noticing).

The ball is a controlled substance around here.  I keep it locked away, or at least out of sight on top of the refrigerator, because exposure to the ball causes Maya's brain to have a critical meltdown.  The breakdown begins the moment I pull it off the fridge.  Maya's entire being is electrified, and her face splits into a dazzling grin.  She cannot take her eyes off it for more than a split second, so she frequently tries to back out of the kitchen and then make the turn into the living room without looking.  When she miscalculates, she collides face-first with the wall, but this doesn't seem to bother her at all.  Nothing does, when the B-A-L-L is out.

The longer we play fetch with the ball, the more Maya's cognitive functions shut down.  She obsesses, exhibits compulsive behaviors, and cannot hear or comprehend a single word that I say.  Sometimes, she will get confused about which ball game we are playing (there are two: fetch and "find it"), and in the middle of a game of fetch will suddenly run off to try to find the ball.  This happens even if I'm holding the ball right in plain sight...her brain is just melted.

And yet, it makes her intensely happy.  Insane with glee.  She never stops smiling, except occasionally when she takes a quick break from the game to have some extra-special time with her ball (she carries it to her crate and spends about five seconds mouthing it, eyes half closed, clearly getting some kind of chemical high from the experience).  When I put the ball away, the obsessive-compulsive behaviors end abruptly, and Maya just lies in a heap of happy panting, brain re-booting and eyes shining.

After overwhelming her with ball endorphins, I completely broke her heart by delaying breakfast by several hours.  When this happens, Maya becomes quite distressed, which we refer to as a "Crisis in Dog-land."  We may or may not also flail our arms wildly, throw ourselves to the ground, and weep bitter tears while moaning, "Crisis in Dog-land! Oh no! Oh woe!"  It is not all happiness around here.

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!