Play Time!

Over the past few weeks, Luna has been developing her sense of play.  As part of her rehab, I've been taking Luna to a small fenced in area for her to practice running.  The first few times I let her run, she had a few trips and slides.  She had not realized that her body is different because of the accident.  After a few trips to the park, she was starting to get the hang of her new body.  You can tell when she is focusing on her feet because she runs more smoothly.  When she is paying attention to something else she will trip up.  For this reason, I prefer to let her run when there are no other dogs around.  She has also figured out that she needs to run much slower than she used to.  No more high speeds for this puppy.  I'm sure she would forget that rule in a heart beat if another greyhound was around, but for now she is respectful of the slow speeds.  To compensate for slower speeds, she does a lot of spinning and circling.

Through all of these running sessions, I have become Luna's play buddy.  At first, she was not a very good playmate.  She would spin her body into my knee taking me down.  Now that we've had plenty of practice, we are much better at playing together.  Our style includes a lot of play growling from both of us.  Yes, I look like the crazy lady at the park, but it makes Luna happy.  I have also discovered that she likes me to give her body a push.  She will sometimes use the push to spin around to face me.  A funny thing about Luna is when she is playing with me, she places her open mouth on my forearms.  She never closes her mouth so I wouldn't call it mouthing.  She just leaves me with a lot of slobber on my jacket.  If, by accident, she does catch a tooth on me it is game over, so she has learned to be very careful.

Today, my Mom and I took Luna to the park for a run.  Unfortunately, it was very sunny with no breeze.  This made it too hot for Luna and her black coat.  She had one good run, a small play session, and then called it quits.  We'll have to try again for a better video.