Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball

I think I've written about this before, but Oscar has a completely different internal clock than any reasonable, decent human being. (My ideal internal clock: sleep from 2 am to 11 am, take occasional naps throughout the rest of the day, never really be too awake and alert ever.) I can understand that I'm not the final word on these things, but Oscar's deviation from my standard is just about obscene. It basically involves him going completely crazy and hyper right before bed and then again at around 6-7 in the morning. I can work with a night person, and I can work with a morning person, but how is it that he has to be both a night and a morning person?

Oscar's secret, of course, is that he's not a day person. After he wakes Karen and me up and we're busy grumbling at each other, Oscar goes back to sleep and stays there for the next several hours. He's like some demented little alarm clock.

Anyways, we've been devising methods for dealing with this situation. Mainly, we just try to tire him out before bedtime in the hopes that he'll sleep as long as possible. Last night I tried taking him downstairs to the bodega with me, because he's still at a point where leaving the apartment is so exciting and stimulating and overwhelming that he gets a little worn out by the experience. In that regard, it did work; he burned off a bit of energy on the trip down there. Unfortunately, I forgot to factor in that running down to the store in my building at 1 in the morning on a Saturday night would expose Oscar to all manner of Murray Hill drunks. I hit the line with my bottles of water in one arm and Oscar in the other when I was overwhelmed by four massively drunk girls who thought Oscar was the cutest thing they'd ever seen. In truth, he *IS* the cutest thing they'd ever seen. But the way they showed their appreciation was just so handsy! I felt so violated. They were slurring drunken questions at me and touching Oscar all over. It was grope-y, and not in a good way.

In case any of those drunk girls should happen upon this blog, they probably won't remember any of the conversation. I'll briefly recap my portion of the chat to bring them back up to speed:
1. "His name is Oscar."
2. "He's a boy, I just told you that his name is Oscar. That's not a very good girl's name, really."
3. "Okay, I told your friend over there that his name was Oscar, not you. Sorry for the confusion."
4. "Yes, he is so cute."
5. "Yes, he is so so soooooo cute."
6. "Yes, he is the cutest thing."
7. "Yes, he is the cutest little baby boy. I feel like we've really explored the studio space pretty thoroughly on this line of questioning."
8. "No, I don't think you should hold him. I think he's kinda getting really freaked out."
9. "Seriously, he's freaking out. Me too."
10. "Oh, there goes your boyfriend and his case of Bud Light! You should follow him."
11. "Seriously, there he goes out the door! That direction! Over there!"
12. "No, really, he's leaving you behind and taking the beer. Go to him!"
13. "I think it's really weird that you just had your friend take a picture of you with my dog." (This last was muttered under my breath, not that it mattered.)

Anyways, obviously I decided that last night's method was sub-optimal. It wore Oscar out and he slept well, but I've been feeling sort of shell-shocked and weirded out ever since, so I didn't sleep very well. I was worried it would traumatize Oscar, but he seemed just fine when we got back. I was the one who was traumatized. All the small touching hands and the slurring! All the agreement in re: the cuteness of my dog! All the Murray Hill frat boys glaring at me because Oscar was stealing away the attention of their intended conquests! (Okay, that part was kinda funny. Hours of game and hundreds of dollars worth of vodka-tonics went into getting those girls back so tantalizingly close to the guys' apartments, and not 100 feet from the door all their efforts were blown up by 6 pounds worth of a critter that eats his own poop when he's bored. Not enough to redeem the experience, but it definitely goes in the plus column.)

Whatever, enough words, now for the pictures. Tonight we tried wearing Oscar out using his green Happy Fun Ball. It's got a little face on it and it rattles when you shake it and we got it for free when we ordered some pet supplies, so of course he loves it much more than any of the dozen chew toys that we've bought him ourselves. Tonight we started working on the fundamentals of playing fetch:



Step 1: Get Oscar's attention with Happy Fun Ball. The best way to do this is to hold it about three inches away from him, because what's more fascinating than a toy just tantalizingly out of reach? (btw, sorry about his weird Dune-esque blue eyes in some of these pics. For some reason he gets blue eye instead of red eye in pictures. It's not a sign that he's evil. Not saying he's not evil, because he is a little bundle of fuzzy, adorable, charming, cuddly, near-psychotic evil, no doubt. I'm just saying, the blue eyes aren't part of that.)



Next step: chuck the ball to the other end of the room and watch Oscar skitter across the floor and then slide headfirst into the wall, taking the ball and a flurry of dust bunnies in his wake.



Next step after that last one: Wait for Oscar to get some sort of grasp on Happy Fun Ball and bring it back. (Yeah, it's fetch. There's not really a lot to explain, is there? I'm just trying to tie a couple of cute pictures together.)



Note the little happy face on the ball. Minus Oscar's evil blue eyes, those two have almost the exact same expression.



Now here's where the fetch game comes apart a little bit. As you can see, at the last second Oscar is veering away from me and the camera and towards his bed. He hasn't quite grasped that the last part of fetch is him giving me the ball back so we can repeat the process, so I have to let him hop up on his bed and then I steal the ball away from him. He's cool with it, though. I think that the second he sees the ball in my hand, his little puppy brain forgets the "I just had that ball a second ago!" thought and reverts to, "I really want that ball!" from the first photo above.



Finally, gloriously, after about 20-30 reps of chasing the ball and bonking against the wall, Oscar got worn out. He just dropped the ball and flopped down, as you can see. It was like he deflated. "My arms, my paws...made of rubber, nothing more."



See, now that right there is one pooped puppy. I'm so going to sleep for a whole night tonight.

(This can only mean that Oscar will be up and pulling his little Tasmanian Devil routine at 5:30 tomorrow morning...)

Cary

ps On the iTunes while writing this post: the first Peter, Bjorn & John album and the new Dinosaur Jr album. Just an FYI.