FALMOUTH – Jack the dog likes to run. See Jack run. Again? See Jack run. Again?
It is a Tuesday in late March and Jon Graessle, 28, of Cataumet is playing in the fenced-in Sandwich Road baseball field with Jack, his 14-month old wire-haired terrier/schnauzer mix that Graessle’s mother, Florence, calls, “a crazy mutt.”
Jack the dog gets ready to chase a ball thrown by Jon Graessle. Jon’s mother, Florence, watches.
“He has energy that you can’t believe 24/7,” she says of the bouncy, mischievous dog that they got in July from the Brewster Animal Shelter.
Florence says that Jack is their second rescue dog. And their home is Jack’s second rescue home. Jack has so much energy, she says, that his previous new owners returned him to the shelter.
“Jon is incredibly patient,” she says as he watches her son throw the ball again and again way into the outfield where Jack’s boundless energy is unleashed.
“I just love seeing him run. I get the most joy out of seeing him in full sprint going out to get the ball.”
“Jon runs him every day, three times a day,” she said. “And then by about 9 o’clock at night he’s ready to run again,” she says. That’s is when he gets his night walk.
Chasing the ball.
“If it had been anyone but Jon, they would have taken him back to the animal shelter,” she says. But this is a friendship story. And friends do things together.
Jon throws the ball endlessly. Luckily, he has help. You might call it a performance enhancer. “I call it a thrower,” he says while he watches Jack dash into deep center field after the ball.
Jack the dog is a good boy.
The thrower is a plastic piece that makes throwing the ball easy. Otherwise, Jon might need Tommy John surgery, like many big-league baseball pitchers. His motion is pretty repetitive and Jack, it may have been mentioned, likes to run.
“He loves it,” says Jon. “We’re here pretty much every day. We’re here for about an hour. It depends on how much he wants to sniff around and how much he wants to run. He can run around for a half hour straight.”
And Jack is not the only one who seems to love it. “I just love seeing him run. I get the most joy out of seeing him in full sprint going out to get the ball,” says Jon.
Jack the dog likes to run
“I’ve seen dogs overweight. That’s not the kind of life I want my dog to lead,” says Jon. “I want him to have an energetic life.”
And then Jack the dog steals the plastic thrower and ball from Jon and and lays down to chew on it. Jack looks up with what seems to be an oh-so-sly grin as if to say, “We’re doing this now.”
Florence adds one thing. “He has a brother from the same kennel. His brother’s kennel name was Wade. If anyone has Wade, we’d love to know if he has the same energy.”
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