The landing game

Mollie, my partner Tracy and I have invented a game.

It's one of Mollie's favourites.

We keep the door through to the living room closed so that the cats can't go upstairs unless they're invited (the reason why is another story), and we have a laminate floor in the hall. Mollie likes to try to be first through the door when it's opened (from either side), so if going from the living room to the hall she does a kind of sideways cartoon scrabble on the laminate then runs up the stairs.
The game is for one of her humans to crawl up the stairs, bang both hands on the landing (dog pounce) and go 'hah!' or similar. This is Mollie's prompt to a) grab a toy/sock/slipper and b) run past taunting us with it. The landing runs across the top of the stairs, so she can run from the master bedroom to the bathroom shaking her 'toy' wildly... and whichever human is at the top of the stairs then has to try and grab the toy or the dog as she runs past... sometimes it ends up with a spot of dog-wrestling, either way it invariably leaves the (dark blue) landing carpet covered in white hair. Don't let anyone tell you that smooth-coated terriers don't moult, they definitely do!!

On a separate note, thank-you to Graham for his mention yesterday!! Mollie unfortunately took Prince's advances the wrong way and thought he was after her chew, which she promptly glued to the sheepskin rug in front of the fire. Does anyone else find their dogs do this? We have a huge fluffy beanbag in the living room and on more than one occasion we've found a partially masticated rawhide knot hanging from it... in fact, at the weekend she glued one to our bedsheet and it left little hard patches which I'm told were quite uncomfortable to sleep on... hehe, glad it wasn't on my side of the bed!!!

Mollie Blog

Mollie is our 3 year old Jack Russell - she's a long legged one, which means some people will think or her as a Parsons Russell. We just call her Mollie dog and tend to think of her as JR X whippet - she runs like the wind!! We got Mollie last November after her previous owner had to rehome her (for reasons which I won't go into here).
Mollie dog is a character. She HATES mornings, would rather lie in until at least ten o'clock. She will quite happily go for long walks - the furthest so far is 8/9 miles so far - and she refuses to acknowledge when she's tired; but we can tell, and we stop and make her have a rest and a drink. She's not quite ball-obsessed, but she does have a small collection of Air Kong tennis balls - some of which no longer squeak, and many of which are "somewhere safe". When she's very excited she likes to squeak a ball to show her feelings...
As my partner and I both work full time, Mollie spends her days with our retired neighbours where she gets lots of cuddles, a cooked lunch, and played with all day if the sun is shining. It's a dog's life.

The photo above is from a sequence taken when she'd just been given a Sherley's Beef 'n' Bacon Knot. It's her favourite treat, although last night she did discover rather a liking for pancakes (made with goat milk).