Viral TikTok Dog Is So Focused on Her Ball That She Misses an Important Detail—the Open Gate Mere Feet Away

This golden retreiver’s concentration is unmatched. Her awareness of her surroundings? Workin’ on it!
By Chad Taylor July 28, 2021 Advertisement Pin FB More Tweet Email Send Text Message Print

There are a hundred different names for what this viral TikTok dog is going through: Tunnel vision. Vapor lock. Getting your blinders on.

You get involved in a task and become so laser focused on one specific detail that it sometimes blinds you to the bigger picture. You've done it. I've done it. Professional athletes have done it. So really, none of us are in a position to judge 5-year-old Eden, the golden retriever who has gone viral thanks to a TikTok posted July 1 by her human, 29-year-old Molly Kuekes of Charlotte, N.C.

In the video, which has been viewed nearly 10 million times and liked over 1.5 million times, Eden pokes her forlorn snout under the pickets of the wooden fence that surrounds her yard. A few short inches out of her reach lies a tennis ball, silently mocking her. Belly to the ground, Eden's attention is complete: She does not move, she does not flinch. She is trying to move the ball through sheer force of will, like a fuzzy Jedi knight.

And while the scene appears to be a classic parable for wanting that which we can never have, Kuekes pulls her camera back, slowly revealing the rest of the fence.

"This would be incredibly sad…" the video's subtitles read, "…if the gate wasn't open."

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Indeed, fewer than 2 feet from where Eden rests—just four small pickets away—the gate is swung wide open, freeing Eden to come around and get the wayward tennis ball, if only she'd look up and see.

"Even though we have 15 other tennis balls in our yard," Kuekes told the Daily Mail, "she gets so hyper-focused on the one she cannot reach."

As do we all, Eden. As do we all.