As we’re going through things in order to clean out the house we finally got around to the basket of dog toys.
“Let’s go through them and throw away the ones we don’t want.”
“Well,” I said, “It’s not exactly like we can throw away the ones we don’t want. The dogs have to decide which ones they don’t want to play with any more.”
The dogs have several toys they play with all the time. We try to give them only one, maybe two, at a time. Most of them get ripped apart. Sometimes in a mater of minutes, other times in a matter of days. It is the rare toy that lasts any length of time in our household.
So, I took the basket of toys, which admittedly has been out of the dogs reach so they can’t play with them, and put the toys in a pile in the middle of the living room. Sirocco was first to the pile and pulled out a toy to play with. Magdalena and Major Tom followed quickly, each pulling a toy from the pile. Then the inevitable ‘I want the toy you have’ battles started as they tried taking the toys away from each other. If a toy got stolen by another dog, they just went back to the pile and got a new toy to play with. Within a few minutes, they had scattered the pile of toys all over the living room.
We’ve given it a day or two to see if they ignore any particular toys, figuring if they don’t play with it, we can toss it. There was a (semi)stuffed reindeer toy that it didn’t look like anyone was playing with. The wife suggested we toss it. I went over to pick it up. Magdalena immediately came over and grabbed it from my hand. Sirocco came over and started a tug-of-war with her. They got tired of it very quickly and dropped it. We took that as a sign that they weren’t really interested in it, so I scooped it up and tossed it.
Then I had to take a box of goods we are donating to the car. Somehow I didn’t shut the house door well enough and hadn’t shut the gate at all (my hands were full of box). I’d just opened the rear hatch of the car and put the box in when I saw Major Tom and Magdalena bolting out of the yard. I called them to me. Major Tom came right to me and fortunately Magdalena followed him. I managed to grab Major Tom’s collar but couldn’t get Magdalena. I hit the button to close the car hatch. As it was closing, Magdalena jumped in and got closed in. I walked Major inside, leaving him in the care of the wife.
I grabbed a leash, went back to the car, opened the hatch, put the leash on Magdalena and got her out of the car. I pressed the button to shut the hatch and she jumped in again before it closed. I thought about leaving her in the car as it was a nice day and rather cool, but I didn’t want to take the chance she’d eat the seats while left unattended. Got her out of the car, closed up the car, kept her from trying to jump in a third time, and took her inside. It seems every time she’s with me she decides it is play time and has to come up with some game she finds fun.
We’ve gotten quite a bit sorted overall. The next step is to start getting rid of the sell / donate piles. That will go a long way toward getting the house cleaned out and livable.
One step at a time, my Hordeling, one step at a time.
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