There's nothing a dog loves more than a nice, firm ball in his mouth.

Done as a birthday gift for  douglaskim.

Special guest appearance by  douglaskim.

EDIT: I changed the text a little and replaced Vinnie.

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“C’mon Erin, stop playing around!” said Kimmy.

The gray wolf chuckled. “Just keep walking. It’s not much farther now birthday boy.”

“Can you please just tell me what the big surprise is? I’m so excited and nervous I think I’ll pee my pants with anticipation!”

Erin was busy guiding his German Shepard friend Kimmy down a road that lead into a city with a blindfold over his eyes. He was one of Kimmy’s childhood friends that he happened to run into a few months ago and was beginning to catch on things. Erin was a wolf who had dark gray fur and was wearing a red hoody and blue jeans to match. Anyway, it was Kim’s birthday today and Erin decided to give him a big surprise and drive him to a location he was certain the dog would love. Kimmy took Erin by his word, and he was very excited. The Shepard’s tail was wagging so much he was wondering whether or not it’d fly off. Kimmy leaned his head forward and sniffed twice.

“Do you smell balls?”

Erin chuckled and grabbed the bandanna wrapped around Kimmy’s eyes, tearing it off and giving his eyesight back. Once the German Shepard saw what was in front of him, his pupils dilated and he gasped dramatically.

“TA-DAAA!!!” shouted Erin.

Kim began to jump up and down like a rabbit and squealed several times like a schoolgirl.

“OH MY GOD ERIN, THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST BIRTHDAY GIFTS EVER!!”

“I knew you’d love it.”

“THANK YOU ERIN!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!” said Kimmy, hugging Erin.

The present Erin gave his friend was a trip to Tensis. Tensis is nothing more than a city filled to the brim with tennis balls. When someone said tennis balls were everywhere, they literally meant everywhere. There were statues of tennis balls, stores that sold nothing but tennis balls, tennis ball dispensers, buildings with a tennis ball design colored on them. All in all, a tennis ball or anything dealing with the sort could be found everywhere. Even the sidewalk was made with the material tennis balls are made of. If the clouds wept tennis balls instead of rain, Kim would think he just journeyed to Heaven. The German Shepard ran over to a ball dispenser and started panting like crazy, licking the glass sphere and jumping up and down again.

“Look at all these tennis balls! They all look so hard and chewy and bouncy and yellow!”

Erin walked over to the machine and put a quarter inside the slot, twisting the metal lever and forcing a tennis ball to roll down a plastic spiral slide. Kimmy watched the ball roll down with anticipation and placed his open maw at the slot. The ball fell into his mouth and Kimmy started chewing and sucking on the yellow ball with glee. He smiled widely with his eyes closed and fell on his back, giggling and sucking on the ball noisily.

“SO DELICIOUS!!!” he shouted, spitting saliva out his mouth.

“Trust me, if you love this, you’re gonna love what I have in store for you!”

“OOH!! You bought me a tennis ball dispenser?!”

“Even better!”

Kimmy’s eyes grew wide again when he saw a dog juggling five tennis balls with his hands and walking down the street simultaneously. The Shepard couldn’t help but laugh and applaud the dog’s amazing acrobatic ability and wag his tail with joy once more.

“This is very cool, but is there anything unique you can do with these balls?”

The juggler laughed. “When have you seen a juggler juggle balls with his tail?”

The dog turned around and started tossing the balls into the air with nothing more than his tail, having no trouble whatsoever. Kimmy started laughing and clapped even more at the juggler’s abilities.

“Hey, check this out! I can juggle with my paws!”

“I doubt that.”

“Prepare to be amazed!”

The dog quickly jumped into the air and stood on his hands, catching the balls with his feet and toes. As he caught each ball, he tossed it to the other paw and chucked it into the air over and over again, juggling balls with his feet even easier than he did with his hands. The dog began to impress Erin and Kimmy even more and started walking with his hands down the street while juggling, not losing his balance even a little bit. Kim and Erin started clapping and attracted a small audience of furries, urging someone in the crowd to throw him a ball. The dog caught the sixth ball with his foot and began to juggle furiously, trying to maintain his agility.

“Here, catch!”

Erin tossed the juggler a seventh ball and he caught inside his mouth, muttering incoherent phrases and smiling with a soft, yellow tennis ball in his mouth.

“You have got to show me how to juggle like that!” yelled Kimmy.

The juggler spat out the ball. “I got an acrobatic skill shop near the edge of the city. Maybe you guys should check it out sometime.”

“We’ll definitely consider that.” said Erin.

---

As Erin and Kimmy were walking down the tennis ball encased sidewalk, they stumbled upon a hot dog cart where a furry wearing a traditional apron was selling hot dogs to the civilians in town.

“Care for a hot dog? They’re hot, fresh and out of the…um…cart.”

“That sounds lovely. Sure, we’ll take one.”

The hot dog furry took two frankfurters outside of the cart and placed them inside two buns, handing them both to Erin and Kimmy.

“Whoa!! Even the food here’s colored like tennis balls!” said Kimmy.

This was also true. The hot dogs were colored to look exactly like a tennis ball and even smelled like them too. As if going to a city that was painted like a tennis ball and greeting people who loved tennis balls and encountering tennis ball dispensers wasn’t enough, now he could eat an edible piece of one. Kim opened his mouth wide and bit down on the odd colored pig-in-a-blanket, chewing slowly with a grin on his face and a small trail of drool slithering down his maw.

“This is absolutely scrumptious! What do you put in these delectable logs of meat?!”

“We managed to find a way to extract the flavor of a tennis ball and compounded it with an actual hot dog. After that, we just grabbed some food coloring and painted the hot dogs like a tennis ball.”

Kimmy whined. “These aren’t real tennis balls?”

“No, they are. I was talking about the ones that are put in the stores. Apparently, some cat ate a hot dog made from tennis ball material and got sick and he sued the city council so we have to sell tennis ball flavored hot dogs instead of actual tennis ball dogs.”

“But you just said these are real hot dogs made from tennis balls.” said Erin.

“They are. Technically, this is on the borderline of being illegal, but what the cops don’t know won’t hurt me right?”

“Just as long as no felines find out.”

“Thanks for the hot dogs!” said Erin, walking away from the vender.

“No problem.”

“Oh, uh, can I have 26 to go?” asked Kimmy.

---

While traversing and touring the ball scented city, Erin and Kimmy wound up inside the local park. Unlike the rest of the city, the park was more natural than tennis ball themed, consisting of street lights, tennis colored benches, trees to lie under, and furries to play leisure activities in. One of these activities involved (like many other themes in the city) tennis balls. But unlike a regular match of tennis, this was a furious game that usually only other canines could play. There was no actual name for this so called game, but everyone just called it Smack Back for obvious reasons. A horde of canines were busy whacking hundreds of tennis balls back and forth at each other like crazy. There were so many balls flying through the air that it was impossible to look up at the sky without having a ball or twelve fly past your ears. Kimmy and Erin walked over to a local hyena and asked him what they were doing.

“So what’s with all the tennis balls? It looks like fun!” asked Kimmy.

“It’s very entertaining and active actually. Basically, it starts out with hundreds of tennis balls getting thrown into the air and everyone starts whacking them with their tails or legs or hands or arms or any part of their body. It’s like tennis but no rackets and we’re close together.”

“Are there any rules to the game?”

“Uh…we just play till we get tired. The only advice I can give you is to never stop whacking or else you’ll get socked in the face several times. And no catching balls in your mouth!”

“Aww!! Why not?!” asked Kimmy.

“We get extremely territorial. If there’s even a drop of saliva from another dog’s mouth on a tennis ball, you can expect a large brawl to ensue.”

Kimmy and Erin walked over to the large wave of tennis balls and stared at the group before trying to figure out when they’d get inside the group. Both of them sighed before shouting and jumping in the middle of the chaos, immediately blocking and bouncing the balls with the arms. Kimmy was panting and joyfully swatting balls left and right with his arms and hands, occasionally turning around and whacking them with his tails. The point of the game was to have amazing reflexes or else you’d get hit in the gut or face…and probably groin if you were unlucky. The German Shepard whacked almost 23 balls in five seconds before he even got a chance to breathe. Erin was also furiously whacking balls back and forth and even jumping and ducking for the ones he couldn’t hit. Some of them bounced on the ground and almost hit him in the leg, but he side-stepped at the last millisecond and kicked the ball with his heel before forming a fist and whacking two balls that almost cracked him in the back of the head. It was a paradox that all the canines could dodge tennis balls that were flying at them like bullets, but being animals and not humans, they responded to their instincts quicker than a furry could blink.

“THIS IS FUN!!!” shouted Kimmy, whacking seven more balls with his arms and legs.

“I know! It’s like dodge ball but the balls fly at you like flies and you have to swat them away.”

“We should really tell the guys back at home about this game.”

“But Kimmy—”

Erin yelped and ducked, turning around and whacking five balls simultaneously with his tail.

“Kimmy how are we gonna carry 500 tennis balls back home?”

“We rent a tennis ball truck obviously!”

The tennis balls ceased and all of the canines whacking the balls ran away when a huge shadow appeared above the gang. Erin and Kimmy looked up and saw a gigantic tennis ball randomly falling from the sky, big enough to crush a city bus in half.

“We need to go now Kimmy.”

“Just one minute!! I wanna catch this ball!”

Kimmy opened his mouth wide and stretched his tongue out.

“Uh, Kim?”

---

Kimmy and Erin were walking down the sidewalk heading for a tennis ball match. The German Shepard was holding and grasping his gurgling stomach after he ate a little too much tennis ball material.

“I cannot believe you ate that whole tennis ball Kim.”

“It was just so big and round and yellow I had to rip the whole thing apart with my teeth! And it tasted so good too!”

“Yeah well, just be careful with that stomach of yours. After eating a tennis ball like that, I’m surprised your gut hasn’t exploded.”

“At least I didn’t try to catch the whole thing in my mouth—”

Suddenly, a tiger with black fur and grey stripes appeared from behind a dark alley and held a handgun in the canines’ faces.

“GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU GOT!!!”

Erin sighed. “Look buddy—”

The tiger cocked his gun. “Oh shit.”

“Erin I-I-I don’t feel that so good.” said Kimmy.

“Just get on the ground and give me your money.”

“But—”

“NOW!!”

Erin and Kim turned around and got on the ground. While Erin was busy trying to calm Kim down, Kim had his hands over his head and his legs were shaking. The bandit started sifting through their pockets until he found both of their wallets and started stuffing the money into his pockets.

“No seriously I…I don’t feel that good; my stomach hurts.”

“Told you not to eat that tennis ball—”

“Shut up right now or I’m gonna blow your goddamn brains out!” shouted the tiger.

Kim whined and his stomach began to growl very loudly at him, increasing his abdominal pain. Fearful of his life, Kim lost control of his bowels and farted right into the tiger’s face, shaking his legs and blowing a nasty trail of gas at him. The tiger caught wind of the smell and started coughing violently until he dropped his gun and started hacking on the stench. Erin got off the ground and turned around to see the subdued tiger on the tennis ball pattern sidewalk, coughing so hard two hairballs flew out his mouth. He started laughing.

“That’s what happens when a cat tries to rob someone whose farts reek of tennis balls.”

“Can we please go to the pharmacy now before my stomach explodes?”

Kimmy groaned again and blasted some more ass gas that reeked of old burnt tennis balls and brimstone, making the feline cough even louder.

“Sure, but let’s wait till the cops show up so we can tell them you knocked out a bandit with your flatulence.” laughed Erin.

---

That night, the two attended a tennis match and had seats right in the middle of the stadium, watching the game with anticipation. Kim was almost leaning into the field as he panted with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. All they could do was watch the ball go back and forth and hope that someone would make a score.

“What could be better than ending a birthday with a good ole fashioned match of tennis?”

“Maybe ending it by drinking a thick tennis slurpee?”

“Nice! They have slurpees made with tennis balls too?”

“No, these are made with basketballs.”

Kimmy stopped sipping the slurpee and spat it out, wiping his tongue off.

“Kidding! Although I’m pretty sure they have a basketball flavored slurpee in this world…”

“Oh.”

The German Shepard grabbed his drink and began to slurp it loudly, trying to get the thick fluid through the straw without swallowing his own tongue. Meanwhile, the tennis match was beginning to heat up when one of the player’s suddenly ditched his racket and began to whack the ball with nothing more than his legs and arms, just like in the game Smack Back. The other furry growled and dropped his racket too and the next thing the crowd knew the players were busy running from side to side, snarling at each other and whacking the ball with their bodies. Everyone started chattering amongst themselves and a few of them stood up with anticipation, hoping to figure out where the ball would head.

“This is where the match really begins to heat up!” said a spectator, just as excited as Kimmy.

The players started to whack the ball more and more and high velocity until a player screamed and whacked the ball with his tail, sending it flying into the air. Everyone stood out of their seats and looked at the sky with their tails wagging, hoping to find the location of the ball when it landed.

“Where’d it go?” asked Erin.

Kimmy was thrown backwards and fell down in the bleachers with a loud thud banging his head against the ground after something impaled him in the mouth. Kim gagged twice and slowly stood back up before he spat out a tennis ball full of his saliva into his hands. He smiled widely and held up the ball, making the rest of the spectators scream and shout with victory as he held up the winning ball.

---

Erin and Kim were currently sitting inside an abandoned locker room talking to each other.

“As if this day couldn’t be any better, you manage to get an autographed tennis ball of that famous tennis player Philip Lembarso. This is the best birthday ever!” said Kimmy, hugging his friend.

“You wanna go meet him? I hear he owns a hotel with a tennis ball water bed!”

“Are you kidding me? I’d love to meet him again! The only thing better than a perfect birthday full of tennis balls is waking up in a bed made of tennis balls!”

Erin and Kim walked out of the locker room to go talk to the tennis player Philip and they each spent the night sleeping in their own tennis ball water beds, happy as clams.