Well, call me Impressed!

Max just out smarted BB out of a tennis ball!

Max has a very bad habit. He eats rocks when he gets bored. I know this from past visits to the ranch. I was a bit worried about this visit. After the first weekend most of the other dogs would be going home. This would leave Max with only his sister, Pepper, and his cousin, BB, to play with. I had to find something to keep Max busy with or it would be back to the rocks. And as bad as eating rocks sounds, it is the pooping rocks that you have to worry about.

Fetch, yeah! Max plays fetch and he even brings the ball back. Max returning the ball means a somewhat risky venture into to removing it from his mouth, but with my winter gloves on, I am willing to go for it. This was working out really well. Much running, much returning, and no rock eating. So far, so good. Some new dogs arrived on Wednesday and they decided to join the game of fetch. Not so good. The new Max also likes fetch and also returns the ball. Only getting the ball back from the new Max doesn't include prying it out of his teeth. He just dropped it at my feet. That was all BB needed to swoop in and steal the ball.

As we all know, fetch is a game of limit iterations with BB. One to be exact, because once she gets the ball, she can't give the ball back.

Well, along with liking tennis balls, BB also likes apples. We happen to have quite the collection of apples on the ground this year and for most of this stay BB has been carrying around apples and not tennis balls. I thought I was only one who noticed this. Turns out Max was aware of BB's new favorite.

When the new Max, I hate when I have more than one dog with the same name, dropped the ball and BB took off with it, Max went a got and apple. He dropped it about 3 feet from BB and then walked away. I immediately thought he was trying to trick BB, but I couldn't believe it. I mean, really, are dogs that sneaky? Max is and it did work. BB zeroed in on that apple, leaving the tennis ball behind. Max whipped over got the ball and brought it back to me.

We were back on for a game of fetch.

Now, I am a bit worried about when they will be able to out smart me.