Gizmo (or I) learn to fetch

I am going to teach Gizmo to fetch.

         With his predecessor (how difficult it is to write that word), Beowulf never learned to fetch.  Beo believed that anything that he could get in his teeth was his.

         I would throw a ball or his favorite object, the inner cardboard roll of a toilet paper roll, in his direction and he would, indeed, run after it.  When he caught it in his teeth, he would continue running in the opposite direction, going as far away from me as possible.

         I had no such problems with Gizmo.  We got him several stuffed animals which made apparently pleasing sounds of little mice being squeezed to death. 

         I held them in front of Gizmo and squeezed them, producing the seductive sound of painful death.  Then I tossed either the football or the stuffed turtle about 10 feet in front of him.

         And Gizmo would run after the toy, leaping into the air moments before he ran past it, grabbing it in his mouth and then bringing it towards me. 

         I emphasize “towards” me because he would run, stop and drop it about three feet in front of me, after which it would roll in my direction.  Like the analysis of a rocket attempting to intercept a fake enemy rocket in a military exercise trying to prove that President Reagan’s Star Wars concept was worth the billions spent on it, close was good enough.