Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Tennis Balls: Contestant Number Nine

In Tractor Supply today, I happened upon a type of tennis ball I had never seen before.  Shall I describe it to you?

They were, well, tennis ball shaped, and tennis ball covered, and had paws on it, as dog-intended tennis balls so often do.  What really caught my eye, though was that they were "mint".  I was fascinated, skeptical, and happy all at once.

Out of the bag, the "Spot" mint tennis balls don't smell minty at all.  Rather, they smell very rubbery.  I asked Elka if they smelled minty to her, but as we don't yet have a "tap once for yes, twice for know" sort of setup, she just kind of looked at me, and then took the ball.  They also do not bounce; if you drop one from about shoulder height, it does a single rebound of perhaps three inches and then lays where it falls.


Elka, as always, was a concentrated and dedicated participant.  She took each ball readily, and set tooth to it.  The first one, I wasn't quite paying the best attention to how long she had it.  The second one, I said the time (11:28) when I handed it to her.  It was but four minutes later, 11:32, when I removed the sad carcass from her jaws.


So, while interesting in its minty-non-minty nature, 8 total minutes of playtime is a sad followup to some of the contenders we've auditioned.




No comments:

Post a Comment