Dog inventor

Dieter is quite the clever one. He has created a new game. It's called Gate Ball.

It works something like this. Dieter is in the kitchen with a Kong tennis ball. He picks up the ball, puts his paws on the gate that separates the kitchen and dining room, and drops it over to one of his humans. The human takes the ball and rolls it back to Dieter via the cat pass through. And repeat. Over and over and over.

It all started quite innocuously. He accidentally bumped the ball and it went through the cat pass through. But after his human rolled it back to him, you could almost see the light bulb go on over his head. Aha! a great new game I've invented.

Hey batta, batta, batta...

The rules are evolving. The humans get three attempts (strikes) to get the ball through the pass through. If it gets by Dieter, the score depends on how far the ball went. Tonight I scored a "Family Room," which is quite a feat with the nimble-fielding Dieter behind the gate.

He did do a Billy Buckner or Leon Durham (depends on which heart-breaking baseball flub you want to conjure up) tonight, and the ball got through Dieter's legs.

We all get some exercise with this one--Dieter running around a fielding and the humans tracking down the balls that Dieter lobs over. They always seem to end up under a chair and that involves some bending and grunting and groaning. Maybe we should create team uniforms--the Dieter Doggers and the Human Hamstrings. We could sell tickets, have a seventh-inning stretch...the possibilities are limitless.

Thanks for devising this fun new game, Dieter!