Playtime at Dusk

I don't know what it is about dusk? Marley and Jasper can sleep all day if I'm home. They're content to follow me from room to room, inside and outside the house and just drop down and sleep wherever I am sitting or working.

 But.....at dusk...

...they come alive and just want to play. Not with us. It's their puppy play time. They rough and tumble and wrestle each other down to the ground. It's so cute to watch them "pretend" to bite each other.

I say pretend because the biting you can see is so soft, their mouths hardly touch each other.

What's really fun to watch is one of them goad the other one into a game of chase. Marley will stand outside on one end of the garden and crouch down, tail wagging, ready to pounce. He'll wait to get Jasper's attention and Jasper will most often nonchalantly pretend to ignore Marley's goading, then he will run at him full head on and the chase is on.

Marley will run one way around the garden boxes and meet up with Jasper around the other side, then before they get to each other they will run back the other way and meet up at the other end.

They'll often take it in turns of who wrestles who to the ground. One taking the domimant stand over while the other is submissively on his back on the ground, then they swap....or take a break and just look at each other for 30 seconds or so before resuming for Round 2.

They can go on for about an hour like this until the sun sets and it's too dark to see, then their play time is over and they come inside and go to bed for the rest of the evening.