But first, on the way, I stopped by the dealership to get maintenance done on my car. I brought Dragon's crate and set it up next to the couch where I passed the time on my laptop.
I left the crate door open the entire 90 minutes so that I could reward Dragon for choosing to stay inside. Only once, about halfway through the wait, did he try to leave the crate. I asked him to get back inside and he promptly obliged, and stayed inside. I had brought a hoof for him to chew on but stupidly left it in the back of the car, so he was restless and bored, but still he put up with having to be "contained." What an angel. As we were leaving he got to say hello to a little girl who had been shyly watching him, and got lots and lots of treats for being calm around her.
Later in the day, after cooking a plum pie with my mother and catching up on all the news, we took a trip to a little creek. I had been telling my mother that I was trying to teach Dragon how to swim -- or rather, at every opportunity I encouraged him to wade in and splash around shallow water, and hoped that at some point he would venture in far enough to start paddling around on his own. She had suggested that we go to Uvas Park. It turned out to be the perfect place.
There was an area where the water was about 20 feet across but no more than 2 feet deep, and even that was only in the very middle. The water was slow-moving along the wide, shallow banks. I walked into the middle of the creek and threw his floating ball a few times. He splashed around after it. Then I threw it into the middle of the creek, and sure enough, Dragon followed.
His eyes grew wide as he suddenly lost contact with the ground but his flailing quickly turned to paddling through the water. He managed to pick up the ball while swimming and get back to the shore.
Fortunately his surprise did not traumatize him -- he was ready to get right back in for another go.
Splashing...
Splashing...
Swimming!
I got the ball, ma!
Are you just going to stand there taking pictures or are you going to throw the ball again?
Taking a break to eat grass.
After the second swim he was tired and shaking from cold, so I put the ball away and let him just explore the area some more. I was grinning like a fool, so happy that I finally had a dog who would swim and play in water. When we got back to the car he buried his head and rubbed against a sun-warmed towel. In a week we're going on a rafting trip on a mellow section of the Russian River, and I hope he'll get more practice swimming then!
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