having heaps of fun on a hot morning

So, it's still hot in Melbourne. But that doesn't mean Penny can't have fun, as long as we go out early.
The shadows are long and the grass is burnt brown, but there are still patches of green to investigate. I wonder why this nice-smelling spot is green?

We hurry along to the swimming spot and Penny fetches her Whirl Wheels. The river's brown, but here's hoping it's not polluted. (The Yarra is always brown; that's why some people call it the upside-down river.)

But wait! Someone's coming. Penny is aware of the newcomers before her human notices.

So now she's not going to swim. She will sit at the top of the embankment and guard her toys.

But that doesn't mean the others can't have fun.

 We went for a walk and Penny raced around on the grass chasing her toys - who'd have thought, all those years ago when she had her cruciate repaired, that one day she'd be running free once again?

Then we headed back for a last swim. A lovely morning that her human would have spent lazing in bed if she didn't have a dog to get her out on a hot summer's morning.

Thank Dog for dogs!

when a successful behavior causes an injury to a dog

Dogs are very specific about behaviors they've learned. One of our favorites with Penny is to drop something as we walk along, and then after a minutes or two, cry, 'Oh, no, where is it?'

Penny races back, touches the lost item with her nose, we shout for joy, and she hurries back to us for her reward...
leaving the found object where it is, for a human to collect.

Pretty good trick, lots of fun for us all.

A couple of weeks ago, as we walked at Rosanna, Penny played in the creek and I was throwing her Whirl Wheel into the water, but I accidentally threw it onto the opposite bank, up a metre-high steep embankment.

In retrospect, I know what I should have done. Walked away, philosophical about the lost toy. After all, what did it cost? Fifteen measly dollars!

But I said those words - 'Oh, no, where is it?' and allowed Penny to laboriously pull herself up that little cliff, through the long grass, across the scrubby plants, until she found it. And, to my dismay, she headed back, down the cliff, across the creek and waited for her reward, having shown me where it was.

I had a second chance to let it go, forget the toy. But did I? No - I let her go back again and again, changing my instruction to the usually reliable, 'Find your toy! Get the toy!'

By this time there was a circle of humans gathered, cheering Penny on, and she received a spontaneous round of applause when she figured it out and came back with the toy in her mouth.

So I have only myself to blame that she now has a limp. We went to the vet a couple of days later and he thought it was a problem with the left shoulder, but that it showed no 'structural damage'. It should recover with rest. (By the way, he asked me what I thought I was doing, letting Penny go through grass that most likely hid a poisonous snake...)

But it isn't better. I think we didn't rest enough. (For instance, we went walking with our puppy friend.) So now we're having a no-walks policy for about five days. Lately it has been horrible hot weather here, too hot even at 11 pm to go out for a walk, so that suited us fine.

Today is cool - thank goodness! So I lifted Penny into the car, to convince her we were off for her usual walk, and then lifted her down at a local park that I'd normally consider too boring for a visit. She mooched around in the shade for seven minutes - don't know why I chose seven - and home we came.

She found some interesting smells, I contemplated nature for a while, and I guess it was a win-win.

out in the wide, wide river

Penny hasn't built on her recent success at fetching two toys at once while swimming in the Yarra. It must have been an accident, because she doesn't appear to remember how she did it.

Yesterday she was, as usual, swimming in the river for her Whirl Wheel, but she absent-mindedly took one with her when she went for the other.

So, a problem. How to bring them both back to shore? She's a determined  dog, and swam in circles, trying to figure out how to do it, gradually drifting further and further downstream.

We weren't worried. Well, not yet. But she was starting to flag - we can usually see she's tiring when she sinks a bit in the water.

Here's a clip of how she solved it. You can hear us calling her to head back to shore with the first one. After all, we didn't really care if the second toy floated down the river and out into Port Phillip Bay, as long as Penny got back safely to shore. But as you can see, she wasn't going to give up. (By the way, the birds chirping in the background are bellbirds.)



After all that effort, it was time to shake the water off...

and roll on the toys.

an older dog and a new trick

Penny taught herself something new the other day. She collected two different items as she was swimming in the Yarra river.

We had been playing with her Whirl Wheel,

alternating it with her SafeStix.

She would drop one near the bank and swim out for the other. But on this occasion she absentmindedly took the WhirlWheel with her as she swam. We watched as she circled around for ages, trying to figure out how to get them both back to the shore.

And then, to our surprise (you'll hear on the video clip that we were a bit over-excited, lol) she swam with both in her mouth.

Here she is, arriving triumphant on the shore!

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.

our replacement floating whirl wheel

Last week our multi-tasking whirlwheel floated off down the river.

It's a great toy, because it's tough, squeaks and can be used in water or on land. My only problem with using it on water has been that the squeaker came free once or twice and fell into the interior, leaving a hole that could fill with water and cause it to sink. Luckily that only happened on a couple of occasions, near the shore, so I could pick it up from the bed of the creek or river. (Things that sink are lost to Penny, as she can't smell them.)

I would not let Penny be alone with this toy, however, due to this problem with the squeaker. I wouldn't want her to swallow the little part.

Because it's an important part of our swimming fun, I went looking for another toy, and found only a green one. The shop, Murphy Brothers in Hawthorn, is one of the best pet suppliers in Melbourne, in my opinion, but they said they don't get a choice of colors when they import these toys.

Well, green wouldn't be my first choice of color. It's too hard to see on the grass!



But Murphys are ordering new stock, so I'll get over there and buy a more visible color.

I was told recently that we need to choose toys in colors that are easily distinguished by dogs. But since I've forgotten what the three suggested colors were, I guess I'll just have to leave it to the manufacturers. I did come across an article on the Net discussing scientific studies of dogs' color vision and acuity and it said, in part

Through these studies it has been suggested that an average dog sees similar to a human deuteranope, a person that is red-green colorblind. Consequently, the dog's world consists of yellows, blues, and grays. When a human perceives a red object it appears as yellow to the dog, while a green object appears as white, a shade of gray. This white region, also called the neutral point, occurs around 480 nm in visual spectrum. According to the electromagnetic spectrum, 480 nm would appear as a greenish-blue hue. All wavelengths longer than the neutral point are indistinguishable from one another to the dog and would all appear as yellow.