We played with hippo almost every day. He brought it over to me when I sat on the couch. I'd throw it in the kitchen. He'd bound off after it. Rinse, repeat.
Last evening, I screwed up. I lobbed the hippo high into the air so it would come down and bounce around the living room. The first time I threw it not so high, just over my head, and everything was fine. The second time I threw it higher. Henry instantly spooked, tucked his stubby tail, and backed into the path of the falling hippo. It hit him squarely on the back.
He was terrified. First he jumped up on my lap and curled into a ball. Then he dashed outside to the porch to hide.
I tried smearing peanut butter on Hippo (that's the white residue visible in the picture), and sure, he licked that right off, but immediately went back to being scared. Twenty-four hours later he still remembers.
Just how, I wonder, does an animal develop such a fear of objects falling from the sky? A puppyhood home with really unstable shelving?
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