Martini’s Big Mystery

I still have some plush toys that I bought for Murphy, even when he was just too old to care about them. He never played with them and after his death I just couldn’t part with them.

Saturday, Mr. Pop was using this computer to catch up on some reports that were due for his lab. While he worked, I got out all those little plush toys and gave them to Martini. He sniffed them and just sort of looked at them. I tossed one and he quickly brought it back to me. Okay, he seemed to say, if they are retrievable, maybe they just might be fun.

He and I were playing with one toy and about the third time he bit into it to pick it up, he hit the squeaker in the toy. The toy squeaked. Martini dropped the toy, jumped back and his ears perked up big time. He apparently had never in his two years of life had a squeaky toy. He quickly turned the toy over looking for the origin of the sound. He moved the toy and looked where the toy had been. His own little self imposed duty was to find out what made that noise and where was it.

By this time Mr. Pop had taken a breather from his work and joined in the fun. While Martini was still searching the one toy for the squeaking sound, Mr. Pop picked up one of the other toys and made it squeak. Martini quickly turned around and looked at Mr. Pop in total little dog confusion. While that was going on, I took another of the toys and showed him that one squeaked too. All of a sudden the tiny little tail started wagging at top speed. He started pouncing from one toy to another making each one squeak. It reminded me of a scene from that Tom Hanks movie where he is dancing on giant piano keys.

While it was fun and funny to watch the little pouncing dog making all sorts of toys squeak, it was sad to me that a squeaky toy would be so foreign to a little two year old dog. That in my opinion should be a rule. Every little dog should have a squeaky toy every year of its life.