Friday, May 13, 2011

Learning to Swim

This is Ginny
Cute, huh?

She came to live with my family a little over a month ago, and has steadily wormed her way into our hearts.
On Tuesday, when we broke a heat record of 93 degrees, I decided that temperatures like that were unacceptable. So, I loaded Ginny and our 12 year old lab Lena into the little truck and headed down to the creek.

Ginny loves car rides, and prefers to sit on my lap as I drive. Surprisingly, with all the excitement that a car brings, she's very calm, not even attmpting to bite me or Lena. Lena likes them too, but she's used to them by now.
We get down to the creek, and Lena takes off. The field/creek is one of her FAVORITE places. Ever. She always has 100x more energy when we take walks in the field. She explored ahead, while I attempted to keep Ginny close using some twine I found in the truck (Loveable as she is, I don't trust her completely to not run off in a new surrounding).

We made our way down the creek bed, Lena rushing down to get into the water, Ginny preferring to army crawl her way down. Lena wasted no time in wading out in the middle of the creek and sinking until the water covered her back. Ginny, on the other hand, went with a little more trepidation, and took her time getting into the water. The first two paws went in fine, but when she moved one paw to walk in deeper, it sunk lower than her back legs. Her face headed toward the water, paw off in no mans land, she panicked, throwing herself back onto the shore as if her life depended on it. Which, I'm sure to her, it did.
No matter how much coaxing, demonstrating with Lena or myself, or even stern words could get her further in the water. Every step past those initial two paws, and she was halfway up the creek bank, army crawl no longer necessary.

So, rather than further tramatize the puppy, Lena and I both got out of the cool water, and headed back to the truck with Ginny, who immediately perked up and bit my fingers as we walked out up the creek bank. And, since she insists on riding on my lap, we both got plenty muddy and wet from her paws and wet belly.
Next time, I'm just throwing her in.

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