Kaylee Learns to Swim!!

Kaylee and Ziggy have become friends. I'm not saying that she sometimes drives him a little nuts. She is only 13 weeks old and he is closing in on 8 years and is a bit grumpy at times, but for the most part they are getting along great. Lots of wrestling, chasing around, a little tug of war, and yesterday she watched Ziggy swim in the pond. I can only imagine what went through her head was that Ziggy was a magical friend.

Yesterday afternoon my friend Tom took Ziggy, Kaylee, me and his dog Joe to Bliss Lake which turned out to be only 10.5 miles or so from my house though I've never been in the 18 years I've lived here. It was in the deep woods, down seasonal sandy roads and was a lovely place with no one around. The whole idea was to teach Kaylee to swim.

Joe is an English cocker spaniel and he LOVES to retrieve and he LOVES the water. In fact he loves them best together and just charged into the lake over and over. The idea was for him to encourage Kaylee, I think he intimidated her more, instead she splashed around in the shallow parts and waited till he charged back out then jumped on his head.. We kept throwing the stick though and eventually she went out far enough to suddenly find herself off the bottom then panicked and turned around and came back. She was adorable.

Today Ziggy, Kaylee and I went back alone. I figured without Joe's distraction and with me actually wading into the water I might have better luck. I was right. I also brought a floating dog toy with a squeaker she had never seen before. Causing it to squeak got her interest, I tossed it, waded in and here is Kaylee's second attempt at swimming.

After this I just kept tossing and she kept retrieving. At one point Ziggy swam rather far out and she followed, then she seemed to realize where she was and abruptly turned about and headed back to shore.

And one last fairly far toss as I saw she could do it.

If the temperatures weren't dropping back from the 80s into the 60s we could go swimming again. OF course, I do have to also work on the house. Ah well.