I have a theory as to why a dog is always pleased to see you, when you don’t think you’ve been gone for long. It’s all to do with having different concepts of time. If you think of a human year being seven dog years, then to us if you are out for an hour, it feels as though you’ve been gone all day and if you do happen to go out for the day without us, well it feels as though we’ve been abandoned altogether. Now faced with those thoughts, can you see that we are filled with delight and relief when you come home to us?
My Mistress had the sense to send us to kennels with a couple of tug toys to play with. It’s amazing how many hours of the day I can keep Shadow amused with these simple pleasures. Given that I am still rather stronger than she is, all I have to do is sit there holding the other end, while she puts all her effort into tugging. The great thing is that she then spends several hours asleep recovering, before waking up and being ready for the next round. She is under the mistaken impression that sometime soon she is going to beat me. It’s like that parent thing. If you let them almost win occasionally, it keeps them motivated and thinking that if they keep trying they might just be as good as you one day. The sad thing about aging is that inevitably at some point their strength will bypass yours as you gradually become the underdog once again. Fortunately, that isn’t going to happen in this household any time soon.