who throws the best shapes?

Hello! it’s BOB here! I’m the happy labrador who loves to eat BANANAS, and enjoys catching things. My all-time favourite thing to catch is the squeaky ovoid that was once known in this house as the BOBJECT. However, since the arrival of my younger brother BRAN, the BOBJECT has mysteriously acquired the far less BOB-specific and (to my mind) far less resonant and suggestive name of RUGBY ball.

Now, I’m as aware as the next dog of how the naming of things can be seen to confer ownership upon them; of how narrow ideas of meum and teum underlie so many violent conflicts; and of the idea of private property as the origin of canine inequality itself. To paraphrase Rousseau, “it is impossible to conceive how property can come from anything else but labour, for what else can a dog add to things that he does not originally create so as to make them his own property?”

I therefore take a completely relaxed view of sharing my BOBJECT – ahem – our RUGBY ball with the foolish young interloper – ahem – with my delightful brother BRAN. Brother Bran, I know that in this house, we dogs share much more than genetics and, here, what’s mine is also yours.

You are very welcome to join me outdoors in a jolly game of RUGBY . . .

. . . I might even allow you to catch my – ahem – our – RUGBY ball from time to time.

. . . but do not think for one second that you are somehow better at retrieving the RUGBY ball, or that you can throw better shapes than me.

For I, BOB – peerless master of the BOBJECT – can fly through the air with the greatest of ease!

BOB leaps and BOB catches, in a graceful, balletic, and impressively gravity defying manner!

BOB reaches heights of airborne retrieval previously unscaled by other dogs!

All hail BOB’s mighty shapes!

Now, as you’ve got bigger, and much more speedy, and have grown longer legs than me, I’ve become increasingly aware that you have begun to regard yourself as worthy of my title, as the THROWER OF THE BEST SHAPES.

But as far as BOB can tell, your claim to this title comes from a single occasion, in which you were captured, ball in mouth, in a state of apparent suspended animation.

I know you still think of yourself as the perpetually cute puppy, but if you ask BOB, the shapes you throw are curious and ungainly

. . . and frankly quite unlike the elegant shapes that are thrown by yours truly, the always nifty, continually nimble, efficiently retrieving BOB.

Perhaps the only sensible way to settle this matter is to open the question to the public: so dear readers, please settle the matter once and for all and tell us us, WHO THROWS THE BEST SHAPES?

. . . we look forward to your response

love BOB

(and BRAN) x