Addiction to Balls

Casey, my about-to-be 11-month old Beagle has a fixation with balls. Anything that is round, makes a noise, and/or otherwise flies from my hand in a playful way is subject to attack. Since he was a winter puppy, we spent most of our play time indoors. Instead of long walks in the freezing cold with snow over his little puppy ears, we played ball in the house. This is where I apparently enabled said fixation.

Thankfully, I have a carpeted hallway in my upstairs bedroom than spans about 30 feet or so--ample room to get up to full speed, and just enough time to slide to a soft crash into the leather recliner. For about 30 minutes in the morning, and sometimes more in the afternoon after work, we play ball. Fetching the ball while playing rough-house with Daddy (that's me) is the absolute joy of his life. And to be honest, I kind of like doing it too. It's been amazing to watch his skills develop from a clumsy little oaf to a full-fledged major league shortstop. The boy can CATCH I'm telling you...

Lately, though, I'm beginning to worry that his fixation is edging towards addiction. Conventional wisdom says that you've got an addiction when it begins to disrupt other areas of your life. This is true for the boy. When it's not play time, I put the balls on top of my chest of drawers. While this is out of sight and out of reach, it is not even close to being out of smell (he is, after all, a scent hound). This causes the boy to sit at the bottom of the dresser and jump straight up in the air, whimper and occasionally bark. He's been ignoring his other chew toys (ropes, cow hooves, bones) in favor of bird-dogging the dresser. This morning, he brought his ball down with him to eat breakfast, but instead of eating, he stood at the baby gate with ball in mouth, waiting for me to take him upstairs to play. Have you ever heard of dog that passed up food for a ball? ADDICT.

As I think about it, I probably should somehow try to break him of this so he's not a total ball junkie. The last thing I need is to pay for a stint in the Betty Balls clinic. My ex and I used to have a Wiemaraner with pretty serious separation anxiety (she was adopted), and we took her to a behavioralist to see if it would help. Several hundred dollars later, and explicit instructions to look Maddie directly in the eye and say things like "You're a strong dog, Maddie," "You're a good dog, Maddie," we decided therapy wasn't such a good idea.

Hopefully, the balls aren't a precursor to other, more dangerous addictions like shoe chewing, digging or general destruction. I think maybe I'll start tapering off the hallway ball-fests and replace it with other games or park time. Note to self: think of new games (make sure they don't require an ounce of effort on my part).