mud and dogs

When walking with a dog, it's a good idea to wear old clothes and we usually do. But yesterday when we walked at Yarra Bend, Human Number Two was headed to the City, so she wore good clothes. Lucky for me, I wore my usual awful old dog-walking gear.

We passed a really good mud puddle and gave our obedient dog the instruction to 'leave it' and follow us, didn't look back to check, and had a nice surprise when she caught up to us.

Now, I ask you. What does any self-respecting dog do if she's all wet and muddy?

Yep, she gives herself a good shake. Too bad if a nicely-dressed human is standing close by.

So, while Human Number Two headed off to the City in her brown-spot polka-dot outfit, I took Penny for a second walk, to swim in the Yarra river at Warringal Parklands.

I made sure to put a towel in the car before I let her in.

So, swim:

And, voila, clean dog!

a dog's ordinary day

Living with Penny can make an ordinary day feel special. Today, for instance, we went to one of our usual places, Warringal Park, so Penny could have a swim. Every person I spoke to commented on what a wonderful day it was and I felt incredibly lucky to be able to walk with my dog in this lovely place.

We walked in the shade of the trees, thankful for the foresight of those who planned and planted this verdant space. (Verdant even in summer, which is rather amazing. But we've had some rain this summer.)



But what was this? A fisherman at the dog swimming spot?




If I were a really nice person, I would have turned away and left him in peace. Alas, I'm not generous enough to do that on a warm summer's day. I gave Penny the 'wait' command and went forward to ask if we could swim, and before he and I could come to an agreement, Penny pre-empted the discussion by disobeying me and racing into the water. What dog could have resisted?

Fortunately, he was polite enough to accept Penny's presence and we moved a little away from him in the hope the fish might swim towards him rather than away. (You can probably tell I'm not a fisherman.)

After a short swim we set off around the park and I was surprised to see a cricket match. In the middle of the week! As they say, you learn something new every day and I've learned that people play this sort of organised sport during the working day.

dogs make us get out of bed at dawn

Now the hot weather has arrived, it's time to get up early and walk at dawn. Yawn...

We went to lovely Yarra Bend park this morning and this is how it went:

You swim out...



You get the stick and bring it back...



You juggle it and jiggle it to get it past the rocks...



and stay out of the way of the people in the boats.

swimming outdoors at Kepala

Having enjoyed watching Penny swim at the indoor pool at Kepala the other day, I thought we'd head off there again today, and seeing it was a warm sunny day I booked the outdoor pool. I think it's a very good bargain to be able to have the whole pool for thirty minutes and only pay $8.



Here's a dog's eye view of the water. Inviting!



I slapped on plenty of sunblock, because this is the time of the year when we get burned, after a winter of not having to take note of the UV levels. However, when I got there I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Penny was happy to swim around fetching her toys and all I had to do was sit in the shade and watch, occasionally tossing her toys in to the water. As long as the toys were floating she was determined to fetch them all back to dry land.

Here she is, working hard to collect them all. It's rather tricky, because as soon as she gets one to the shore and heads out for the next one, the wash from her passing sweeps it back out into the water. But she did it eventually.

dogs and fitness

We believe it's important to keep up Penny's level of fitness, especially as she had her knee operated on last year. She had the traditional repair of her cruciate ligament, and for about seven months she swam regularly, often twice a week.

Now that we have more confidence that she is recovering well, we've returned to some of our previous activities. The long-awaited return to Cindy's Allsports class has been the highlight of our week. So it was disappointing the see that she had a slight limp after last weekend's class.

It was a hard decision to stop going to the Allsports class, but we will rest from it for a while to make sure she's okay.

So, back to the swimming...

I decided to take her to Kepala Canine Resort, because it's a bit closer than the other pool we've attended for about a year. Also, Penny can play in the water rather than just do therapeutic laps.

One of the things I love about Kepala's indoor pool is the mural. It makes me feel relaxed just to lean back on the fence and look at it.

I also like the fact that the pool is raised above the level of the floor, so I can walk around with Penny and encourage her to swim by racing her for her floating toys. She gets up a real speed when I'm hurrying around the edge to grab the toy. The entry is easy for her, too. There's a raised platform for entry:

She's supposed to enter by the ramp to the right of this photo - although there's a gentle slope, dogs need to be confident enough to push off into deep water when they reach the bottom of the slope. Definitely not a problem for water-loving Penny.

She thinks that's a pretty good place to come out of the water, actually. (But about half the time she did come out at the other end, the correct place for emerging. It depended on which ramp was closer when she reached the toy.)

It's entertaining to throw more than one toy in the pool and watch her organising the retrieval. Eventually she came up with the idea of swimming for one, depositing it on the side, and going back for the next.

She always collected her favorite first, of course - the beloved Whirlwheel.

It was great to discover that her AussieDog Slapathong floats, too!

Swimming to get fit for the dancing contest

Now that Penny and I are preparing for Honey's dancing contest, she's keen to get fit. So we went off to Ruffey Lake Park today, braving the (wonderful drought-breaking) rain. Penny decided she needed to swim to loosen up her muscles for some of the moves, so we were glad to see a notice that said swimming is 'encouraged'.



We had fun throwing Penny's whirl wheel and she enjoyed the swim.

It was only on the way around the Lake that we came across another sign saying swimming was 'discouraged'. Whoa! What was going on? So we went back to the first sign and checked it more carefully.

Hmm... looks like someone had scraped away one letter from the sign and left it for a cursory glance to give the wrong impression.

Anyway, we all had fun, and we did what they said. We only let Penny swim near the rocks so she wouldn't degrade the banks.

a dog swims to start the new year

It was a wonderful way for Penny to start the new year - she swam at her old favorite spot in the Yarra river. We were a bit nervous about her first free swim since her cruciate surgery, but she seemed to take it in her stride - hmm...mixed metaphor there!






We are following the advice of our canine physiotherapist regarding Penny's recovery, and only introduce one new activity at a time, so that if she suffers a setback we will know what caused it.

However, this evening she seems fine after her swim.

For the last month we've been swimming twice weekly at Dogs in Motion, and Penny has built up to swimming for thirty minutes, so I felt fairly confident she would cope with a short swim in the river, but it was still a bit scary seeing her go out there. Thank goodness we didn't have to jump in and rescue her.

Swimming to build stamina

Penny's lost a lot of fitness over the last few months of recovery from surgery, so we're going to try to swim regularly.

When our vet nurse at Dogs in Motion in Doveton asked whether Penny was used to swimming, I said yes.

Well, I didn't consider a few factors:
1. Penny is now much less fit than she was six months ago.
2. This is a different situation, requiring steady laps rather than just fun in the water.
3. There are also other dogs swimming laps around the edge of the pool.

Luckily, they are careful to show you what to do.

Here she is, ready to go. She wears a collar provided for us and is on a longer than usual lead. The collar is tight and high on her neck, and she has a swim jacket to give her confidence.




And she swam well.



But the humans didn't do such a good job. All the other dogs seemed to manage to swim past the steps if they were doing more than one lap. But Penny, who was supposed to do two and then rest, tried to scramble out each time she passed the steps.

We've decided that we'll have the command "get out" when it's the right time for her to do that, and our vet nurse suggested the command 'not yet' for the times when she seems to be heading for the steps at the wrong time.

I guess we'll get used to it.



The other complication is that we're slow and the other dogs overtake, so we have to lay the lead down on the concrete and stand still so the other human steps over the lead and passes us. All this with Penny splashing and scrambling because she can't understand why we're suddenly holding her back.

Hmmm... will I have a person with a camera handy when I eventually tumble into the swimming pool?

Sunset magic in Darebin Parklands

We headed down to our favorite place, Darebin Parklands, this evening, to see how the plants have responded to the welcome rains we've had over the last week.

First a few stretches to loosen the muscles:



Then a bit of ball chasing in the magic of the sunset:





Next, a surprise! A lovely new seat where the humans could rest after the strenuous business of standing around while Penny chased a ball:



And a swim in the clay-streaked water of the creek for Penny:

Major breakthrough in dog intelligence

After many months of painstaking research, Penny has solved the almost-impossible problem of how to retrieve two Whirl Wheels from the river. I post this photo here as proof of the success of her studies.



There is one small problem. So far she has not been able to replicate the results, but she's intending to get back to the research lab (aka Yarra River) as soon as possible to continue her investigations.

hot days and play in the brown River Yarra

Today we headed off to the muddy Yarra early, because it was predicted to be more than 103 43 Celcius (that's about 110 Fahrenheit!). (Thanks, Mary, for pointing out that 103 Celcius would be rather hot.)

There I made an interesting discovery about the whirlwheel toy. You can pick it up with a stick if your dog won't bring it back on land. Penny always waits just in the water, ready for the second toy to be thrown. She won't put down the first until she is quite sure there's another one in flight.

Here's my patented method for picking up this toy:



And here's Penny hanging on to the first one, watching, watching, watching for the throw of the second toy:

early morning walks in the summer heat

Because the hot weather has returned, many people are walking late at night or early in the morning. They're both fascinating times; at night you can stroll around the streets and listen to the sounds drifting out of the open windows of the houses, and in the morning you can enjoy the freshness of the day before everyone is about.

The other day we walked in Yarra Bend park and Penny enjoyed a swim in the river and then a roll in the grass.



The best part about the walk was that we were right above a freeway and the traffic was roaring past, on the way to work, and we were free to wander. In this picture Penny is standing by the fence that edges the freeway, which is sunk below the level of the park.



Today we returned to Darebin Parklands. Seeing the water was low (and there hasn't been any definite information about where to swim), we stopped at a spot that would normally be too rapid for her. I could even join her in the middle of the creek without getting my feet wet!

new swimming hole for dogs in Darebin Parklands

The newly mulched surroundings of the old dog swimming hole in Darebin Parklands are looking good.



Although we are not sure where dogs can swim, we tried out what we think will be the new access point to Darebin Creek. It's quite nice, with stepped rocks so the humans can look out for snakes and the dogs can get down to the creek safely.



The water is not very deep, though. Even a small dog like Penny is wading rather than swimming, and I worry about the rocky bed of the creek causing her to sprain a joint (as happened once when she was playing in the Yarra River up at Warburton).

vomiting up seawater after a swim

Penny's always introducing us to new experiences.

On Friday I took her back to the beach, because it was so much fun the day before, and because from the first of November we're not allowed on the beach during the main part of the day. It was cool day and we had the beach to ourselves, and probably I let her overdo it with the swimming.

This time I took a thin throw-toy, so she could swim with her mouth shut and possibly not swallow so much salt water.





But I think she did swallow too much, because she introduced me to the fine art of doggy frothy mouth.



At the time it seemed quite funny, but it wasn't so funny when she spent the entire evening running in and out of the house to eat grass.

I had a look on the internet that evening, but I'm glad I didn't come across this sad story of a dog that died after a visit to the beach.

WebVet has a good overview of the care we need to take when our dogs swim anywhere.

Penny seems fine after her adventure, but next time I won't let her swim so long, and I'll try harder to make her drink fresh water while we're there. (She wouldn't drink the water I offered her, until we left the beach.)

Here's a picture of the only thing that Penny was worried about - a super scary rock in the water that needed a lot of barking at!

dogs swimming at the beach

Yesterday Penny had her first swim at the beach, with her friend Jabari the GSD. I think Penny had great fun, but it did involve a lot of sea water going down her throat, to judge by the stuff she vomited up occasionally.

The photos aren't very clear, but I only had my phone with me, not a camera - and it was sunny, so I couldn't see the screen of the phone. (Oh, excuses, excuses!)





We thought we'd better get to the beach before the first of November, when dogs aren't allowed on the sand in the main part of the day.

swimming in Darebin Parklands

Yesterday Penny and I came across another section of the Darebin Creek where it is fun to swim. She swam for ages, setting out across the little area to collect tennis balls, as I fiddled with my camera and took lots of shots. Penny didn't seem to tire of it for ages.

Here are some of my favorite pictures:

First, the ball landing. (I wish they were sharper!)






Second, Penny going for the ball.




Third, shaking out.



Fourth, Penny concentrates as she waits for some ball-throwing on the grass to dry off.