why my dog loves puddles

Penny loves every kind of water - except for her bath. If we walk in Darebin Parklands in wet weather there's a particular place where a muddy puddle forms and Penny will always plonk herself into it, often rolling over (to make quite sure she collects enough dirt to cover the entire kitchen floor).

When we walk along the creek in summer we have to watch out that she doesn't suddenly disappear down the bank into the creek.

And I still don't like to recall the time that she launched herself suddenly into the Yarra River at Studley Park to chase a ball and then couldn't climb up the bank. Suffice it to say I got rather muddy before she was on land again.

Last night I was following a link from one of my favorite blogs, The Pet Museum, and arrived at The Poodle History Project. For a lover of literature and of history, this site is an endless source of entertainment. Incidentally, those who grew up as I did devouring the Regency romances of Georgette Heyer, will be interested in the part about the Prince Regent's friend 'Poodle Byng'.

Okay, so what does this have to do with Penny rolling in puddles? Well, as I have mentioned before, her ancestry is somewhat mysterious. She was sold to us as a maltese X shih tzu with one poodle grandparent. We've always taken the poodle heritage with a grain of salt, except for occasional remarks by passers-by about her coat or the shape of her muzzle. What we hadn't taken into consideration was her passion for water.

I hadn't made the connection between the word 'poodle' and the word 'puddle' until last night. I looked it up on a few etymological sites and there it was... They come from the same linguistic source - poodles are puddle dogs.

So, maybe Penny does have poodle ancestry. Of course, that leads to a new nickname for her - 'Penny the Puddler'. (One of the other ones is The Flying Carpet).