Last spring, the wind blew a kid's plastic soccer ball onto my property.

Caz thought this was fun. He couldn't manage to pick it up and it bounced away when he tried.

It was fun for almost five minutes, then he found a way to sink his teeth into the problem and the problem went away.

A month or so ago, I saw a soccer-ball sized toy ball at the Pet Store labeled "Indestructible". It's firm foam rubber covered with elephant-hide grade rip-stop nylon.

Caz thought this ball was great fun. It lasted almost four hours, or roughly ten bucks an hour.

That's a bit steep for a play/cost ratio. So next time I hit Meijer's, I got a real soccer ball. Something designed to be kicked around and beat on.

This lasted about ten minutes before he punctured it. Despite the soccer ball being cheaper than the fancy dog toy, it came out to about $100/hour for his amusement.

So, I thought about it, and decided that the reason that the fancy dog toy lasted longer was that it's filled with foam, not air. Conveniently enough, Caz had left a hole in the soccer ball just the size of the spout of a can of Great Stuff expandable foam.

I had an unopened can of this on my shelf, from a bout of leak-proofing Carol's and my first house.

It turns out that after some twenty years, I no longer had a can of expandable foam. I had a can of solidified foam.

But, a quick trip to the hardware store fixed that problem.

Caz is finding the new, foam filled ball great fun. As an added bonus, the foam didn't expand evenly. It created a ball that's heavier on one side than the other, so it rolls funny and can even change direction.

This is great fun for Caz. It's already lasted for several hours.