Cricket is an eleven-year old rat terrier / chihuahua mix. While she is still very spunky and active (and she loves to hike!), she isn’t usually very playful with the big dogs. She does like the role of the “play police” when the other dogs play though; she likes to run over and bark at them.

But every so often, she gets in a frisky mood and likes to play with Darwin, the youngest dog in our pack. This is always amusing to watch because they are so strange when they play with each other. Darwin likes to play very rough with the other big dogs (see this video from last May for example).

But with Cricket, he takes a completely different approach. It seems to involve licking her head a lot to get her attention, but he does seem to understand that playing with a small dog is a totally different thing than playing with someone his own size.

It cracks me up when she gets up on her hind legs so that she can bop him in the head with her paws. Sometimes she uses the sofa for some extra height.

I was actually able to catch just a bit of it on video today. This is very rare, as they usually stop the instant I pull out the camera, but for some reason today they actually kept going for a minute or so.

If for some reason it doesn’t play correctly within the post, click here to view it on YouTube.

A few more pictures from a few days ago…