Little dogs can't jump (or catch)

From the desk of Pocket Dog:

Every day when Daddy gets home from work, or when we sleep late weekend mornings, after our constitutional, I frantically search the house looking for where my little yellow ball has hidden from our previous days play, and when I find it I drop it besides Daddy.

Sometimes Daddy throws it over my head and I chase it as it bounces away. Sometimes he rolls it and I either stop it like a goalie, smothering the ball, or chase after it barking. And sometimes he just flicks it over my head.

When he does that I jump up, open my mouth, and have the ball bounce off my jaw, or smack off my nose, or flick off my teeth, or just pass right through my mouth like it was Steven Johnson's hands. I go on Tanner Brigade. I watch the videos. Dogs catching balls, frisbees, sticks, water fowl, and I can't catch a tiny yellow ball.

Foley, who has never played ball in her life, will sit, watch and criticize, but, since she is the only other dog in the house she becomes my defacto coach, even though she knows as much about catching a ball in her mouth as she does about fencing. "Don't lift your head too much, don't take your eye off the ball, open your mouth wider, way to go Buckner, nice drop Holliday, you suck" she barks at me breaking my delicate concentration. She's actually a pretty miserable coach.

Daddy tries to help me. He holds the ball, showing it to me, showing it to me, showing it to me, then bounces it and it heads right to my mouth, and out again. He tells me my barking when I see it doesn't help: the force of air with the bark forces the ball out of my mouth. But I get so excited.

Sometimes, when we're home alone, and she's bored, Foley will let me out of my crate and practice with me. She takes the ball in her mouth, and softly flips it to me less than two inches away. I snap at it, try to catch it on my tongue, leave my mouth open and hope it goes in like an envelope through a mail slot, but nothing. Foley suggested putting glue on my lips because she said it worked "on so many levels," but I rejected her offer.

Even Mommy, who was built for sitting, not playing, wants me to catch the ball. She says with a ball in my mouth at least I don't bark.

Sometimes Daddy holds the ball in the air and I take it from him with my mouth, because if I could take it with my paws I would so be on Letterman. Then he flips it too me and I'm Jackie Smith open in the endzone (obscure 70's Super Bowl trivia. You can Google it if you want.)

I am lucky that Daddy never gets mad at me. Except for Saturday. That's the day he had the leash in his hand ready to take me outside and I peed on the rug right in front of him. Hey! I was saving him the trip outside.

In turn I try to never get mad at Daddy, But today, but did he blow it big time.

Mommy and Daddy have been planning to put video of us online. Today he decided to film me trying to catch the ball. Now, Daddy doesn't know how to take a video with the camera, or even if the camera can take video. But that didn't stop him. He kept looking down at it, trying to figure out how to use it, and he bounced the ball in front of me, just as he had a 100 times today.

He then held up the camera, waiting for the ball to thunk on the ground, but it didn't. I snapped it right out of the air! On my first try on video! Touchdown Pocket!

Daddy fiddled with the camera some more as I did my end zone dance. Then I hurried over to see the video. And Daddy didn't record it.

I didn't get mad. He had been so patient with me it wouldn't be right to get angry.

But I did change the name of the blog. It shall now be called White Men Can't Video.