Winter or Summer, rain or shine, the first thing he does each night is crawl under a blanket as he goes to bed. In the Summer, as you might expect, he quickly gets hot and crawls out again to lie on top of the blanket five minutes later. Sometimes, he'll repeat this process five times during the night. The blanket has nothing to do with warmth anymore. It has become part of the sleep ritual.
C ollecting tennis balls is another ritual.
We frequently pass a public tennis court on our walks and Spot quickly learned he could almost always find stray tennis balls hidden in the tall grass of a small wooded area behind the court. He must be able to smell them, because no matter how well the balls were hidden in the weeds, he would always go straight to them, often from as far as thirty feet away. At first these tennis balls were prized objects to be played with during the walk itself. Later, they just became collectible items, no different than Beanie Babies or Limoges Boxes. S pot collects tennis balls.