What Is He Thinking?

In his day-to-day affairs, Pappy often gives proof to the truism that "dogs are weird". Sometimes it's easy to interpret his actions in human terms-- "he's teasing that other dog with the toy". At other times it's possible to guess at the doggy motives for something-- "he's doing this or that because he's engaging in dominance behavior". The rest of the time, I suspect his activities would even mystify another dog. For example, give him a chicken chew or pizzle, and he'll carry the untouched treat in circles around the house crying and crying like his heart was going to break. It's really quite pathetic, but... huh?

At every opportunity, he chases balls in the back yard with lunatic abandon and twitch reflexes of a terrier. He seems to like it when I unpredictably toss it in different directions, often ricocheting it off the big tree in back. For some reason, he always snags the ricochet, heads for the tree to give it a thorough examination, and trots back to have me throw the ball again. Does he think the tree threw the ball? Is he hoping he can work out the trick so that he can get it to throw the ball when I'm not around? We may never know.