The Ball is dead! Long live the Ball!
I'm not sure if you remember us discussing how our dog doesn't like toys... really, any toys, but we were really excited when we finally found something she would play with. It's a 2 or 2.5 inch diameter rubber bouncy ball we picked up at a career fair (yay free stuff). When you bounce it, it would [used to] flash lights and make noise (things like sirens and telephones ringing). After a long and glorious career... Ok, after a few short weeks of more excitement than we'd ever seen our dog display... it died. Now, at random times, with or without impact, it will weakly flash lights, and if you strain your ears, you imagine you can hear the noises it used to make. It has ceased to be super-fun-exciting-toy-of-happy-doom.
Luckily, we had been afraid of this very thing happening, and thus were scouting out possible replacements for the super-fun-exciting-toy-of-happy-doom. I managed to find the exact item on a website, and looked into purchasing said item. Only to discover that the minimum order is 10,000 units. I'm not sure our house would hold 10,000 units if we stuffed it to the brim and moved into the yard. This was clearly not going to work.
After more scouting, we found a number of balls that don't light up and say annoying things like "here, kitty kitty!" We kept looking. After much perserverence, we found something called the "Zap ball" It seems to be the exact same center wrapped in a more pet friendly red rubber coating. There was much rejoicing. Unfortunately, puppy won't get to rejoice until we give it to her for Christmas, but luckily, that will happen soon. Long live the new super-fun-exciting-toy-of-happy-doom.