Our dog, a Border Collie, loves to play. If you put down his food, and bounce a ball at the same time, he will give the food a quick glance, then race after the ball. When he was a young dog I was trying to train him to heal. A teenager across the street started to bounce a basketball, and shoot it at a net. My dog was so frantic to play with the ball that he managed to squirm out of his collar. Afraid that he was going to race across the street in front of a car, I managed to catch him in a rugby tackle, but it was like trying to hold on to a slippery fish. After several failed attempts to get his collar back on, and suffering from the hostile glares of passersby’s who I am sure wondered why I was sprawled on top of my squirming dog, I had to call out to the girl and ask her to hold the ball for a moment. As soon as she stopped bouncing the ball, my dog calmed down, and I easily slipped his collar back on.