Reforming Spurgeon

We currently have Spurgeon living with us. A frightful thought considering he’s been dead for 116 years. No, not that Spurgeon. This one doesn’t have any initials due to the fact that he is of the canine variety. He’s a 2 year old Lab who belongs to Clint and Kim. They moved into their new house earlier this year and while the grass was growing Spurgeon was fostered out to a couple of church families (talk about committed support to church leadership).

It’s lots of fun having him with us – he adds some more life to our quiet home and we have a MASSIVE back yard in which he may frolic to his hearts content. The odd (now deceased) mole sometimes finds their way into our yard – another reason he’s a great dog.

A little history: As a puppy Spurgeon was deprived of playing with any types of balls. Whether they be tennis balls, plastic balls, squeaky balls, the balls from the preschool next door or even avocados which functioned as ball type objects when the bought balls were destroyed by...GENEVA! She was the other dog the Archers owned. She ruled the manse yard with an iron paw (quite by nature as an Alsatian). So effectively Spurg grew up without having any toys. Sadly, Geneva needed to go to doggy heaven (another illusion – see my previous post) because of her health, leaving all the tennis balls, plastic balls, squeaky balls, lost preschool balls and yes, even avocados in the world to Spurgeon! Now that he’s on his own he is truly in the groove of over-compensating his deprived puppy-hood by being THOROUGHLY obsessed with any balls he finds!!!

Of course the favourite is fetch. However, removing the ball from his mouth at first proved impossible, leaving all the balls to merely be destroyed. However, the first stage of reformed Spurgeon after the endless effort Lyle made, was Spurgeon actually releasing the ball!
Once the slobbered ball is collected poor Spurg is in such a frenzied state that he stops at nothing to attain his precious ball!!

So much so that he has crashed (HEAD ON) into numerous items. These include the outside table, many pairs of legs (almost taking us out a few times), the bushes that outline our yard, the shed and at one point he also crashed into the lemon tree, again head on, sending lemons flying in all directions. I think though, my favourite was when he jumped into a bush in efforts to retrieve his favourite red ball only to discover a cat in the undergrowth obliviously hunting for a gecko. The cat took off and Spurgeon fled, with neither ball nor dignity back to Lyle with his tail between his legs.

The launch before the cat incident

Spot the Dog

(he's just right of centre - that white speck in the bushes)

The lemon tree

He also lays claim to any balls that land in our yard. Many a soccer ball, much to the neighbourhood children’s dismay, has been promptly claimed and popped within moments. Even our soccer ball used for the youth kids at church was lost to Spurgeon’s obsession.
When we go out to feed him he grabs the nearest ball in case we forget why we were going outside and are drawn in to his scheme to have us throw the ball instead. This rarely happens. As a result the ball remains in his mouth as he approaches his food bowl. He never seems to know what to do with the ball, so it inevitably ends up in the bowl and he manages to eat is food around it. Now this creates a problem with soccer balls because they fill the entire bowl covering his food. I kid you not. He does not know what to do when this happens! He looks up at you helplessly, even displaying a quizzical brow... as much as a labrador has a brow... But of course as we approach him to remove it he picks it up again in hopes that he’s going to have it thrown for him... so all that to say he’s still in the reformation process.