I gotta admit that dogs swimming in pools, lakes, or the ocean makes me kind of nervous. Well, not all dogs. Some dogs are just built for swimming. My dogs… are not. But it’s still fun to watch them try.
The first time one of our dogs, our Boxer Lucy, discovered water, we were in Forest Park in St Louis years ago. We were walking on a pier on the edge of the little lake when she just all of a sudden got it into her head to dive in. I’d like to tell you that she gracefully became an expert swimmer immediately and astounded us with her newfound aquatic skills. But she actually just looked up at us with this stunned look, like she was saying, “What the hell is this?! Nobody told me it was like this!” I mean, she changed her whole attitude about water in a millisecond. I don’t have it on video, but it went kind of like this:
And when we used to live near the Pacific Ocean, we would sometimes take Mabel and Gilbert to Dog Beach. They were always kind of curious about the water, but they were never really brave enough to venture in very deep.
In the end, it wasn’t so much about them “swimming” in the water. It was more about how dirty they could get before we all got back into the car.
Happy dirty. The filthier my dogs are, the happier they are.
If you really want to know what it’s SUPPOSED to be like, you gotta have a Labrador Retriever like my brother.
I mean, I’ll go ahead and keep my Beagles, but check this video out. It’s just 7 minutes of puppy swimming cuteness. And kudos to the daddy dog for always making sure to round up the straggler puppies.