Dog Poop and Tennis Balls

My dogs poop a lot, let me tell you! They eat at the same time, twice a day, so at least they’re fairly regular about it. Never underestimate the value of getting your dog to poop on a schedule. We also have two times that we generally go on walks – around noonish, and around 5:30ish (after Hubby gets home from work). We have a very nifty dispenser on the end of Tank’s leash that holds a roll of doggy bags, so that’s convenient. Excepting when the Hubbles one of us uses the last bag and forgets to put a new roll in, we’re always prepared when we’re on the go.

The thing is, I feel like we go through a lot of bags. Sometimes both dogs will poop on a walk, and it’s never coordinated. Like Tank will make a pit stop before we come across one of the trash cans on the trail (which is awesome – that dog routinely does his business within a few feet of a trash can), and then 5 minutes later Matti has to go (after we’ve passed the can and there isn’t another one for ten minutes). So there’s two bags already, and sometimes… sometimes one of them has to poop twice. We’re talking about a walk that lasts anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes.

One day, we had a 25 minute walk and both dogs pooped twice, far enough apart that I wound up using four doggy bags.*

For those of you still with me thus far (and I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to read an essay about the intricacies of my dogs’ bowel movements), the main point here is actually that I had to go to Petsmart today to pick up more doggy bag rolls.

Whilst at Petsmart, I picked up a pack of colored tennis balls. For all their pooping, the dogs are some good boys and they sure do love tennis balls. I bought some really cheap ones at Target the other day, but they managed to demolish them in exceptionally short order. They chew all of the fuzz off, sometimes denuding the ball in a pattern (Matti), and then they chomp it until it splits open. Again, it’s a hazard of Big Dogs. They normally are only allowed to have the highest chewer rated toys I can find, since otherwise it’s just like telling the dog to eat a five dollar bill.

So my plan here was, “Hrm, that tennis ball in the backyard that is still in perfectly good condition is a store brand ball. They cost a little more to get them at the petstore, but obviously it held up way better.” I buy the doggy bags and the pack of tennis balls and return to my pooches. They each got a colored tennis ball and you cannot imagine how ecstatic they were.

I get on the computer and tell the hubby all about my absolutely fascinating trip shopping for dog supplies, and remark on how it was a totally sound purchase to buy these more expensive tennis balls because blah blah blah.

You know what’s coming here.

That’s when I turned around and Tank had the red ball in his paws, pulling a long chunk of fuzziness off it with his teeth. About 15 seconds later he also had the ball split open. He was still, of course, ecstatic with his tennis ball. He’s been rolling around on the floor with it in his mouth, batting his paws and running away with it if I get close since he seems to have figured out that Mommy throws away tennis balls once he eats them…

Adorable, but frustrating. They can’t have any dog toys with rope for about the same reason. They just sit down and work at pulling the threads apart and consuming them. Though, you know what they say… a dog is a machine for turning money into poop.

*Also, the other issue with having Big Dogs is that they have, of course, Big Poops. It’s not really feasible to just keep the bag untied and reuse the same bag for the other dog.