[yorkietalkjilly]

Most Yorkies and their owners have that same determination, that's why we love that breed so much. Let a ball or toy roll under the couch or hutch, dresser, they will drive you nuts for days trying to get it out if you don't get it for them that first day. Of course you can't stand much more than 30 minutes of all the maniacal scratching and furious activity going on - they are not subtle in the fact that they are working hard - before you stop whatever you are doing, even to getting out of the warm bed to a chilly room smack in the middle of the night, to fetch wanted object out just to get some peace and quiet again.

My first encounter with this total determination was with my first Yorkie, little Scotty. He was never over 3 lbs. soaking wet and early in our life together, I'd seen a water bug crawl out from under the hutch after 3 days of drenching rain. He'd seen it, too. So I dispatched said bug and then used a fair amount of Raid directed all under the hutch. He didn't bother about the dead bug, he'd seen me flush it in toilet paper down the toilet. But 2 days later, one of his balls rolled under there, no doubt getting nicely contaminated all over with Raid! I sure didn't want to give him anything that had been near the Raid area nor deal with even touching that ball.

You know Yorkies and know what happened next. I waited him out for 3 days, believe it or not and finally, when I was a broken soul(I'd heard him in the night in the den furiously working to get his ball but thought surely he'd eventually give up), I gloved up, got many paper towels and got down on the floor with a flashlight to fetch the yucky ball and plopped it right into a bathroom sink filled with hot water and detergent. Scotty was right there by the sink, jumping up onto the cabinet and scratching, up on his back feet, clawing at the cabinet door under the sink until his ball had soaked a while and I washed and washed the ball, drained the water and rinsed it for 2 minutes. Dried it but still tried faking him out with another ball I'd placed on the cabinet top. He wasn't having it. Took that ball into his mouth, sniffed and snorted and spit it right back out and started clawing after his lost ball he knew was still sitting up there. After 3 days, you'd think he'd be less ardent - NOt so. Finally, 5 minutes later I almost ran back into the hall bathroom where he was working hard and rewashed, rinsed and dried the ball and gave it to him.

He grabbed his now-found ball in his mouth and ran back into the den and began tossing and chasing it. I quickly placed boxes and things around the hutch and watched him resuming his ball-playing, happy as a clam. Peace at last.

From then on, when ANY of my Yorkies rolled their toys or whatever under furniture, I just immediately got it out to save my sanity. You have to own a terrier in order to understand their level of determination.