Sometimes a tennis ball just isn't organic enough

It must be the influence of the recently-opened Whole Foods in our town or something, but the dog suddenly went all Euell Gibbons on us, sleeping with a pine cone in his mouth instead of his beloved tennis ball (played by a rotating cast of characters, since he keeps turning the tennis balls into "baldy balls" by removing one of the figure-8-shaped felt pieces... very slimy and nasty, requiring replacement... he never seems to notice the swap, like viewers of Bewitched and the Dick York/ Dick Sargent thing).