I’ve been feeling bad that I’ve not been very active with Zoe lately - somewhat because of the heat, half because I just haven’t been feeling up to it lately. Of course she’s always by my side, but she hasn’t been getting much activity lately. So tonight while I watched TV I found a tennis ball and played fetch with her for a while, watched while she played with the cat, and played some wrestle games with her. She looked so happy.

She’s getting so good about fetching. She chases the ball, jumps on it, then runs back to me and would actually jump up on the couch beside me to drop the ball. If I don’t take it, however, she’ll grab it again and walk off with it - and sometimes when I reach for the ball she gets over-excited and smacks my hand with her paw in an attempt to play keep-away. (I always win.) But I’m thrilled at how she runs right back to me with her toy. The only part that makes the game more difficult is that if it rolls under or behind anything she won’t go get it, because it’s too “scary.” So every few throws I have to get up and fish it out and toss it in the middle of the room for her. I try to throw carefully to make sure she can catch it easily. I was really wishing we had a nice fenced yard for us to play fetch in though.

Den came out to the living room for a little while, and started wrestling with Zeeke. Which is amusing in and of itself, but making it even more amusing is the way Zoe hangs back, mock-growling, and jumping in to nip Zeeke when he’s pinned to the ground. She’s such an opportunist. Granted she does tend to get totally run over by Zeeke if he’s on his feet and she’s not careful, so it’s pretty smart for her to stay out of his way until he’s immoble. But it’s so darn funny to watch her jumping on him when he’s down. (He, by the way, treats her kind of like a fly - he ignores her completely. His entire focus is on his daddy.)

After a while of getting run into, Zoe decided to beat a retreat and jumped up on the back of the couch to watch the rest of the fight. It still cracks me up when she does that! She’s like this little mountain goat. So she was my headrest for a while.

And I still think she’s by far the cutest, most beautiful dog in the world. Her cute little dainty snout, her intelligent brown eyes, her adorable floppy ears. I can’t help but to give her lots of kisses. I’m such a mushy mommy.