Zinnie’s Ball

Zinnie is obsessive about  playing ball (must be the border collie half of her.)  While I do chores she constantly  anticipates where my attention will be --at the hose bib filling buckets, in the barn getting grain, forking  soiled cow bedding into the compost  pile--  plops the slightly deflated basketball down in front of me, and demands I play with her.  I try to ignore her so she doesn't think she is the boss, but she is so darn persistent.  And cute.

After I finish chores, I usually relent and kick the ball for her to chase for a while, and then we walk the farm and check on the status everything.  She carries the ball along in case I can be persuaded to play some more.

This morning when we walked down to look at the pond, she accidentally dropped the ball and it rolled down the bank and out onto the very thin ice in the middle of the pond. It is probably no more than 4 feet deep out there, but I sure wasn't going after it, and I didn’t want Zinnie to try to get it either. I told her to leave it and we went back up to the house, but all day I worried she would remember her ball and fall through trying to retrieve it. It is very dear to her.

Tonight after chores I walked down to the pond and saw that the ice had totally melted and the ball had drifted to the shore. I called Zinnie and told her to get it. She was overjoyed and climbed carefully down the steep bank - but when she tried to nab the ball with her teeth, she accidentally nudged it with her long nose and it floated out to the middle of the pond. I had to tell her to leave it again. So disappointing.