08/03/2011 @19:50:47 ^20:17:26

a heartwarming tale of helping a stranger in need

Okay get this, so my mother had the day off work and as it was a nice sunny day I said, let's go for a walk, and so we went to and all the way around the edge of the memorial park.

On the far side there was a fence and as we were walking along we caught sight of a couple of dogs and upon further examination a woman right up against the fence between the edge of the park and the railway line on the other side. She was crouched down facing towards the fence.

Never one to keep her mouth shut my mother called over and asked if the woman was all right. It turned out that she was trying to reach a ball which had rolled through the fence, but she couldn't. One of the dogs was staring intently at it, it's his favourite, she says. My mother said maybe we have longer arms.

So anyway this ball right, it's way too far away to reach with the hands, the woman is saying she tried to reach it with a stick, I could do so as well but it wouldn't move far enough and then being on a slope would roll back as soon as the stick stopped touching it.

Then it suddenly occurred to me to use two sticks, one in each hand, instead of just reaching through one handedly. Using each stick alternately I was able to roll the ball a small distance, then switch sticks and roll it a bit more with the other one. Doing this I was able to draw the ball up the slope and eventually bring it into reaching distance.

I threw the ball and the dog caught it in his mouth. I patted him on the head and said "there you go mate". The woman thanked us both and we all went on our way.

Well I hope that suitably warmed your heart. I was just pleased to have found a retrieval strategy that worked...