Games boxers play

I don't think they were bred for this purpose, but somewhere along the way boxers, at least those of my acquaintance, seem to have become the clowns of the canine world. For them, life should be a merry round of mirth, play, food and sleep, a combination that works for me.

In addition to entertaining others, some, like Little Edith Ann, seem pretty good at entertaining themselves. Edith seems to have come up with several discrete games, which include:

*The cynodrome (which is what I think the Greek word is or should be for dog race). This is a pretty simple game and consists of running madly in circles or figure eights with no purpose other than joy;

*Bowling for chickens. While she is much too well behaved to kill or even hurt chickens, Edith cannot resist acting like a bowling ball and scattering them like bowling pens by charging into crowds of the fowl;

*Losing and finding. This game is usually done with a ball or similar toy and involves "losing" it by putting it under something like a piece of furniture and then "finding" it by digging it out or by bugging a human to retrieve it. It actually seems like she is enacting a story about losing and finding something, which come to think of it is a pretty good summary of thousands of movies and stories; and

*The gravity game. This one shows at least a bit of thought and something of the curiosity of a budding canine scientist. At some point, Edith became aware of gravity, at least to the extent of noticing that toys roll down hills if you put them in the right place. Sometimes she reminds me of a quadrupedal Galileo as she experiments with rolling and falling balls like her illustrious forbear in Italy.

The world would be a better place if more people and groups of people were better at entertaining themselves.