Meet Sugar, the Police Dog
For those of you that don’t know, Ron is known as Pappy to his grandkids. He has been staying at his house more often during the stay-at-home order. This is hard because he loves his grandkids so much. Before the stay-at-home order was in place, they would play every night. He even comes up with games for himself and Riley, our youngest, to play to keep them entertained. Their favorite game currently is called “Police Dogs” and the extra lengths Pappy has gone through to make sure they can still play Police Dog, is just so sweet.
Name of game: Police Dogs
(Riley LOVES German Shepards, and wants to become a dog trainer as well as a Police K9 unit.)
Here’s how the game works:
Riley becomes a police dog named, Sugar. Pappy becomes her human helper. Pappy asks the police dog, Sugar, for help with “missions.” Missions could be:
- rescuing another animal
- finding the stolen item
- helping to capture the bad guy
- and many more
Typically when they are in the same house they go on the “mission” together but when they were separate houses they needed a way to communicate. Ron had a perfect idea. He picked up two VHF radios from Action Watersports (photo below), these are the radios that we use for our jet ski rentals. On the back of the one radio, he labeled it “For Police dog Sugar Only”. This way Pappy could still give Sugar missions to complete just like they would when they were in the house together.
Example Mission:
The pretend phone rings….ring ring, ring ring and on the other end is an urgent voice asking for help. Ron acts as if he is talking to them and ask questions of who, what, where and writes it all down on his notepad (pictured below) He is telling Riley the details on the radio.
He hangs up and alerts Sugar that she has a mission to complete. “Ok, Sugar, the Paw Patrol can not find the Mayor or Chickaletta! Can you help?” Sugar barks and wags her tail in excitement as to say, Yes!
Sugar aka Riley is now running around the house working to complete her mission of finding the Mayor and Chickaletta. Depending on Riley’s mood, a mission could last a few seconds or a few minutes. During her search, she is communicating with her Pappy by VHF radio keeping him up to date on where she has looked, what she has found and what she is going to do next. Ron is then communicating back to her his ideas and any updates from the original urgent caller.
Suddenly in an excited voice, you hear, “Pappy I found them! Mission has been completed Pappy! What’s my next mission?” This could go on for hours at a time with breaks in between to grab a drink and snack for energy to complete the next mission.
We are so blessed and thankful to have such a loving and special Grandparent like Pappy. He loves his grandkids and always finds a way to create memories no matter where he is.
We would love to know if you have made up games for your family. Reach out to us on our social media and let us know if about them. Also if you end up playing “Police Dog” we would love to hear your experiences and see your pics! We might be quarantined and separated, but let’s take a cue from Ron and find ways to stay together.
