A lhasa apso puppy having fun in water

 

 Peppa had her first experience of water play two days ago and again today. I had read that lhasa apso dogs don't like water, but we thought it was worth a try.

It has continued to be hot this week, so we  wanted to get out the old pool Penny had loved. We put a sprinkler into it, so that the water was moving but not deep. 

I found an old footstool that had flat legs that we thought  would not damage the pool floor.

                                                                                                                      

 

An additional box outside the pool acted as a step for getting in.

It was fun!

 

too hot!

It's just too hot to do anything today.

Penny had a couple of ice blocks made of juiced vegetables earlier. She has plenty of water available. Thank goodness the power hasn't gone off, so we have the evaporative cooling on. And a fan.

She had a walk early this morning, followed by a bath in cool water.

Penny has us looking after her, but the poor creatures that share our world are suffering today. The Little Ravens were sitting near the doggy bowl of water, with their beaks open. I put a hose dripping into another container, but they didn't go near it. I think perhaps it wasn't in the open enough, so they couldn't tell whether predators were nearby. (Not that there were likely to be many predators out in 40 degree heat.)

Pretty dry and hot here these days

Penny has her walks at the crack of dawn these days. (Well, we try to get back home before 9 am, which is the time we have to slop some sun protection on the humans.)

Yesterday we went to Rosanna, and walked in the cool of the morning, but it was still nice to have a drink to rehydrate ourselves. I was struck by the difference between the 'landscape' around the tap, where dogs spill water (messy drinkers, all of them!) and the surrounds where the poor soil gets no water.

It's a great example of the difference sufficient water makes to the plants.

Penny camouflaged

Penny was almost invisible recently, after she frolicked in a mud puddle, enjoying the rare experience of rain, and then rolled in the dry dirt where there used to be grass.

And now she's at it again, blending in to the indigenous grasses of another park.

Isn't it lovely to see how the native grasses can cope with the current dry weather? Thank goodness for the people who work so hard to put in appropriate plants that can support wildlife. (Volunteers, for the most part.)

It's hard to keep non-native grassed areas alive now, with such a lack of moisture, and you can see in the next photo what a difference it makes if the area is watered. The more distant part has received water, in order that sporting events can go ahead.

I used to be critical of the use of water on sporting grounds, until I went to a talk recently about how decisions are made when allocating our precious water resources. The speaker told us that in the awful Millennium Drought, suicide rates soared in many towns when sports grounds were allowed to go to ruin, and when consequently sports events were discontinued. The psychological value of such community events is incalculable.

I sure hope we're not creeping into another drought...

water harvesting at a popular dog walking park

When we can't be bothered going far from home, we love walking at Chelsworth Park. We can walk around the sports ovals with Penny running free, but if we head off into the network of paths through the bushland along the Yarra River, Penny stays on lead.

We enjoy both types of walking.

Sometimes in warm weather we've seen dogs swimming in the new pool there. I do wonder whether it's safe, in terms of water quality and in terms of the grid across one end of the pool. I'm the sort of person who's always looking out for possible dangers.

Today when we arrived at the park, we saw some explanatory signs that we found really interesting. They explain what the pond is really for. We did know already that under the sports ovals there is a huge network of pipes to collect and store rainwater, and that the pond had something to do with it.

So, now we know to stop calling it a 'pond' and refer to it as a sedimentation basin. It seems to me that the water should be relatively clean, because the trap will have already caught the rubbish from the street stormwater drains.

But as to whether Penny should  swim there, I'll have to wait until we get more information about whether it's allowed. There's no sign forbidding it, though, and the water would only be rainwater.
On the other hand, the cement path leading down to it isn't very inviting.

I've wondered why the second pool rarely has any water in it, and now I see that it's actually a rain garden, allowing the water to sink into the ground.

It's amazing to think of so much water being collected and stored under the grass.

What a fabulous initiative! Living as we do in the driest continent on the planet - hmm, maybe Antarctica is drier, but I think that's not the case - we value our water.

summer - or drought once more?

This morning, in our summer routine for hot days, we set off early, when the parks are pretty much deserted, except for dog walkers. The sun was brassy in the sky, and already hot at 7:45 am, but bearable because of the clouds.

As usual, Penny made the walk interesting, stopping to draw my attention to a good smell on a rock...

and on a post.

The grass on the sportsground is still green, thanks to watering from the storage tanks.

But it's frightening to see how the environment is drying up elsewhere, now that it hasn't rained for so long.  The cracks in the earth beneath our feet are a warning of how fragile our hold on life is, in this dry Australian continent. I have water tanks to hold 8000 litres, but two out of three tanks are empty.

I hope we're not slipping back into drought.

roman beach just for dogs

Slavenka has posted a link to a lovely photo of dogs in Rome jumping into the Tiber in a beach that is just for dogs!

Wow! Lucky dogs!

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).