Who's teasing who here anyway?

Yesterday afternoon I saw the neighbor's visiting grandson (7 or 8 years old) on the neighbor's side of our mutual fence. My dog was on my side of the fence, approaching the kid, then backing off, barking, reapproching..

Repeat above behavior. Several times.

I could hear the kid saying something to the dog and could see the kid reaching his hand toward the dog through the fence.

I figured the little brat was teasing my dog and headed out into the yard to tell him that is not a good idea. My neighbors are wonderful, and I couldn't understand why they hadn't said something to stop this behavior.

As I got closer, I could hear what the boy was saying. "Give it back. Come on, give it back!"

Only then did I see that the dog had a ball in his mouth.

The kid had accidently tossed the ball into my yard, and was trying to coax the dog into returning it.

My dog, a retriever, had done what a retriever would do -- fetched the ball. But then he would approach the fence with ball in mouth as if to give it back until the boy's hand reached through the fence. Then the dog would back up, and the "game" would start all over.

I returned the ball to it's rightful owner, and walked back into my house realizing that I had been wrong in thinking that the kid was teasing my dog.

Nope. The dog was teasing the kid!