Rover's birthday

Yesterday was a very special day for the best boy in the whole wide world: my dog Rover turned 9! We celebrated with the following lovely "cake", which I made by frosting half of a hamburger bun with liver pâté (the cheap supermarket kind, don't worry) and spelling out his age in doggy treats, since I don't think he knows how to blow out a candle and is afraid of fire, as any sensible dog should be.

He also received a brand new to us gently used tennis ball that Joanna and I found the other day when retrieving a ball that I somehow managed to smack onto the overhead walkway at the tennis court where we were playing Monday morning.

As a (mostly) Labrador Retriever, Rover's love of tennis balls is the stuff of Shakespeare sonnets.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more greenish-yellow and more squishy.
Rough winds do make it hard to catch you,
And summer’s leash hath all too short a length.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
Which makes me pant after several goes;
And every throw from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or Josh's dodgy aim, untrimmed;
But thy eternal bounce shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fuzz thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When split thou seams become'st.
So long as dogs can chase, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.