The beast and the ball

     The beast is the year old 170 pound mastiff that rules our house.  Usually he is a relaxed, laid back wuss.  He will lie down on your feet or sit regally with his back to you if he wants attention.  He tolerates any torture the 65 pound german shepherd metes out to him, she being the more active of the two dogs.
     He will let you take anything away from him in the house, allow you to pull his tail, play with his toes, check his teeth, tug or clean his ears, all without so much as a scowl.  My eldest was amazed when I reached into his huge mouth with my whole hand to remove something he had picked up from the floor that shouldn't be eaten.
     A few months ago, while visiting the doggie park, we discovered a horse ball, a hard plastic ball about 10" in diameter.  This ball can't be picked up even in his mouth and the other dogs at the park showed no interest in it.  Ranger, the beast, had found his favorite plaything, he swatted it with his front feet, pushed it with his nose and for all the world looked like he was playing soccer.  This amused everyone there with their dogs and many smartphones came out on video mode.  Each time we visited the park, he went straight for the ball and soon decided it was his, giving a warning half hearted growl if any other dogs tried to take it from him.  As we live on 30 acres of mostly grassland, we ordered one online and will toss it out for him to play with occasionally.  Unfortunately, our land slopes down toward the south and eventually the ball would end up at the other end of the property with Ranger unable to bring it back to the house.
      After a while, he realized he could push it uphill to some extent and so the ball on occasion ended up under a fence on the south or west sides of our land.  It only took one try to learn that he would not let us retrieve the ball nor carry it back to the house without him leaping to try to knock it from our hands, impeding our forward progress, so we started carrying a canvas grocery sack with us to "hide" the ball in order to bring it home.  He is fun to watch with the ball, but more training on "leave it" is in order before I go after the ball again.