As you all know by now, Sadie is completely obsessed with her little squeaky balls. Every night, if she’s in possession of a functioning squeaker, Sadie will squeak constantly for an hour or two. She’ll run around the house, squeaking, rolling, dropping, and chasing that ball until she’s exhausted. She also tries to get me involved in the process, giving me the ball to throw, asking me to play catch, losing the ball under furniture so I have to come rescue it, etc. After months of this cycle, I have realized that the quickest way to tire Sadie out and get her to stop squeaking for the night is to play catch with her for as long as possible. And during these nightly games of catch, I’ve developed an obsession of my own. I can’t seem to stop taking pictures of Sadie catching the ball. I just love the way these action shots look. When I get photos ready for this blog, I rename them with a description and number, and right now I am up to catch photo number 43. And those are the photos good enough for the blog, so you cam imagine how many hundreds of others I’ve taken to get 43 awesome pictures. So it would seem that Sadie’s squeaky ball obsession is contagious enough to infect me with my own obsession.

This post is part of Rascal and Rocco‘s Pet Parade blog hop.

I found out this week that the pet store is discontinuing Sadie’s absolute favorite toy. Remember the squeaky basketball from my Squeaky Obsession posts? Sadie absolutely adores these squeaky balls, but only when they can squeak. Once she breaks the squeaker, the ball is dead to her and she goes looking for a new one. So to keep my pup happy, I wanted to have a stash of balls to give her a new one whenever she needs it.

After looking everywhere I could think of online and failing to find those specific balls anywhere, I decided to try the local store. The closest pet store did not have any and could only confirm that the item was discontinued and they wouldn’t be getting any more. So I drove to the next closet pet store, ten minutes away. After searching the entire store, I noticed a clearance bin by the register. Success! I found one package of Sadie’s favorite squeaky balls left. I immediately bought them and left the store. I was extremely happy to find them, but I knew Sadie would go through them pretty quickly. If I left it up to her, Sadie would probably destroy all four of the balls in that pack in one day. So thinking about my baby’s happiness and being an indulgent dog mom, I decided to drive to the third and final pet store, a half hour away. I looked through the whole store and began to worry I had made the trip for no reason. Then I got to the clearance bin by the cash register. The cashier asked if I needed help and I told her I was just contemplating how to tackle the bin to get to the package of balls I could see below four feet of other clearance merchandise. Since no one else was in the store, two employees came over to dig with me. We ended up finding six packages of Sadie’s precious squeaky balls. They all thought it was adorable that I wanted to buy every one I could find for my one little dog.

Pleased with my efforts, I went home in possession of a whopping 28 new squeaky balls. I just have to make sure I ration them carefully, but this stash should keep Sadie happy for quite some time.

This post is part of the Thoughtless Thursday blog hop hosted by Ruckus the Eskie and Love is Being Owned By a Husky.

This post is also part of the Thursday Barks and Bytes blog hop hosted by 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like A Dog.

In this flashback photo my adorable little puppy is posing with one of her butterfly toys. I must confess that I’m a little obsessed with all things butterfly. I don’t actually like the bugs themselves, but I love everything and anything with a butterfly design or in a butterfly shape. So when I was puppy shopping in preparation for bringing Sadie home the first time, naturally I sought out every dog-related butterfly product I could find. Sadie must have had at least ten butterfly toys waiting for her when she arrived. Unfortunately not a single butterfly lived past those first few weeks. Turned out my new puppy loved eating stuffed toys, including butterflies. I still can’t help but buy Sadie butterfly accessories like collars and dresses whenever I come across them, but I’ve learned my lesson with the stuffed toys. All stuffed animals now live well above Sadie’s reach. Occasionally you’ll find her staring longingly up at a stuffed animal, whining at me to get it down for her. But since I know she’ll only play with it for five minutes and then start to eat it, I now skip ahead and go straight to the eating: I distract with a healthy snack.

This post is part of Rascal and Rocco‘s Pet Parade blog hop.

Sadie’s squeaky basketball obsession has finally calmed down somewhat over the course of the past week. It’s still her go to toy when greeting someone at the door, but she doesn’t obsess about it on her own as much anymore. However, she still enjoys my hide and seek mischief with that particular toy. This time I hid the ball in plain sight and sat on the couch a foot away from it, and it still took Sadie ten minutes to realize where I put it. And then another ten minutes to try to figure out how to get it. I’m really enjoying being the mischievous one for a change.

This post is part of the Monday Mischief Pet Blog Hop.

On this Mischief Monday, I’m going to confess that I’ve been the mischievous one lately. Last week I talked about Sadie’s Not So Temporary Obsession with her mini squeaky basketball. Well the obsession continues (day 7 if you’re counting) and instead of letting it drive me crazy, it’s driving me toward mischief. I was tired of Sadie constantly knocking the ball under furniture or into hard to reach areas, so I decided to create some distractions.

First I put Sadie’s ball into an empty tissue box and sat back to watch her attempt to retrieve it. But that was far too easy, and Sadie was back to knocking the ball under the furniture again in no time. So next I put the ball in the far corner of her dog crate. She avoids going in there as much as possible, so it was funny to see her trying to stretch her body out as far as it could go to reach the ball without actually going inside.

But eventually she got the ball back and the cycle started once more. So then I noticed the empty laundry basket. I placed Sadie and her ball into the basket, enabling her to squeak to her heart’s content without being able to send the ball under the furniture. And it worked perfectly for quite a while. I even put one of her dog beds in the basket so that she could lay down comfortably while squeaking.

Eventually that became too boring for Sadie and she discovered that if she dropped the ball over the side of the basket and cried, I would come running and hand it back to her. After playing that game with her a few times, I gave up on the laundry basket and looked around for a new idea. While in the kitchen I realized that the ball would sink nicely into an oven mitt and Sadie probably wouldn’t do too much damage to the mitt.

This one was the most difficult for Sadie and she soon became frustrated with the oven mitt. She kept trying to put her head inside to grab the ball, but she could never quite reach it. Eventually she discovered that if she picked up the mitt and shook it, the ball would fall out. Lastly I took one of Sadie’s toy bins, emptied it out, and overturned it on top of the ball. She seemed to enjoying pushing it around and scratching at it, until she eventually tipped it up and got the ball out.

At this point I ran out of the more creative ideas and just started hiding the ball around the house; always in different rooms, but always in places she could safely reach. That gave me some nice long relaxing periods of time while Sadie searched for the ball, without the constant squeaking and furniture interruptions.

This post is part of the Monday Mischief Pet Blog Hop.