I was playing with Barclay this morning with his favorite toy in the whole world, a tennis ball on a long rope tied to a stick – kind of like a giant version of a cat toy where you’d have a feather on a string on a stick. I swing the stick around and the ball bounces around and he chases it and leaps in the air, twisting and snatching it in mid air – it’s quite a show. He has incredible fast relexes, and how he calculates where to be to snatch it out of the air is amazing! When he catches it he’s so proud he brings it back to me all wiggly and happy 🙂

This morning we were playing right before I had to leave for work, and he had already made some pretty spectacular mid-air catches, when he jumped up and miscalculated and the ball thumped him right in the eye! Hard – I heard the ‘whump’ and knew that was a hard hit, coupled with a YIPE from him! He stopped and fell over and started pawing at his eye and rubbing it on the ground – poor puppy! I finally got a look at it and it looked ok, he just didn’t want to open it. So I scratched his neck to relax him and took him inside and he cuddled up next to me on the couch and licked my hand while I gave him a good rub to calm him down. Pretty soon he was squinting through it, and before I left for work he had it open again and everything looked pretty much normal. I don’t know if dogs get black eyes, but that hit certainly would have warrented it!

Poor pup, we’ll just have to be more careful. We can’t stop playing with the toy though, it’s his favorite, he even will go get it and drag it around the yard looking for a game. I’ll just try not to put his eye out!