Missing cheerleader

Darling Daughter was in town all last week with her little Junkyard Dog in tow. JD is a wonderful little beast, but she's used to being the only dog in town: Darling Daughter slipped her into the apartment complex under the no-dogs-allowed radar, so JD has to readapt whenever she finds herself around other barking beasts. (She has cat friends in her apartment building, and she sort of "gets" them.)

Our house, on the other hand, features two large-ish dogs who are used to being part of the pack; Tank is a gentle giant at about 70 lb, and Alpha Bitch lives up to her name at 45. Tank has made Kitty a little skittish around dogs, although she's marginally okay with AB. With JD, maybe not so much.

A couple of evenings, Tank stuck his big head as far as he could under the side of my bed so he could sing along to Kitty, which I sort of assume drives her up into the box springs so he has at least a less-direct view of her. JD, who outweighs Kitty by only a few pounds, decided she could get in on that game.

But instead of sticking her head under the bed and wagging her tail outside while she sang, JD marched right in under the bed and barked her head off. That sent Kitty scampering through the bathroom toward the living room and the relative safety of the crawl space behind the couch, with JD and Tank hot on her heels. AB came flying off the bed to slow JD down, and Tank's plans to cut Kitty off at the pass were arrested while he stopped to check on the skirmish. Both times, Kitty got safely away.

The house dogs love to play fetch. AB mostly likes the super balls that I found for our ball chunker, but Tank will chase or catch just about anything we launch for him. Number One Son and I try to get out several times a day to play with them so they can get their exercise, and we didn't stop when JD was in town.

JD doesn't quite get the rules. She had to work a lot harder to get the ball from the larger dogs, who can jump higher and run faster than she, although she gives them both a good run for their money. And even if we played a sort of seditious keep away to simplify the job of getting the ball back, she occasionally came up with it; then we either encouraged AB to snitch it when JD dropped it (usually to bury it in the sand) or wound up prying it out of her jaws.

Between times, she parked herself behind the other two dogs and barked. She might have been trying to get our attention so we would throw the ball to her (which was long since futile), but she appeared just to think it was her job to bark until we threw it, because she shut up as soon as it was in the air. NOS and I are pretty good at ignoring barking when the dogs are outside as long as we know what the cause is and we don't appear to be annoying the neighbors, so we mostly just let her bark and laughed back at her and called her the cheerleader.

Yesterday was our first day without JD around. I work at home in the mornings, and usually I toss the ball a few times when I take "coffee breaks" a couple of times during the day, but yesterday they weren't very enthusiastic about the game. NOS played with them a couple of times, but their play also seemed to end sooner than usual.

Today NOS spent most of the day in his room, so playtime was up to me. I worked at home all day today, so I took one play break during the morning, but only AB played, and that wasn't for very long. This afternoon, only Tank seemed to want to play, but he only took a few balls before he decided to go in, too.

It can't be the weather; today has been mild and bright. It can't mean they're off their feed; I've made sure they're both eating just fine. It can't mean they're feeling lonely; they both have each other and the cat.

I think they miss their cheerleader.