Reply #22: My toy rat terrier is a tennis ball freak [View All]

[Philosophy]

She weighs all of 7 pounds and she has to open her mouth as wide as possible to cram one in, but whenever I take here anywhere in the car, she has to take a tennis ball with her. Last week I cleaned out my car and extracted about 20 balls that she had lost under the seats. Sometimes she even insists on taking a ball with her when we go for a walk. A few times we've gone on a two mile walk in 90 degree heat and she carried a tennis ball the whole way and almost passed out from exhaustion. Sometimes she'll let me play fetch with the ball with her, but most of the time she plays another game she invented where she'll set the ball right in front of me and then snatch it up and run away growling if I try to reach for it. If she has the ball in her mouth I can pick her up by it and she will not let go. If she can't find her ball and I tease her by saying "I have your ball!" (even if I don't really have it), she will get angry attack and bite me. She goes through about 1 ball a week - most of them just get lost when she carries them somewhere, and the rest she eats all the fuzz off (which often causes great trouble later coming out) and then punctures and shreds the rubber part. She used to like squeaky toys and chew toys when she was a puppy, but now she plays exclusively with her tennis balls.