staying at pattie's

This week, my old Girl Scout Leader and Co-Leader's family are going on a vacation, so a friend and I were asked to watch their house, and their dogs, for the week. THIS HAS BEEN SO DIFFICULT! My friend has been gone a good portion of the time that I am home, and there are five dogs to watch. Mango, Ginger, a year-old hyperactive brown lab, Guinness, a HUGE black lab that looks more like a horse than a dog, and Jack and Chloe, two little yapper dogs. First of all....THREE LABS! In a house, most of the time by myself! Plus, they don't have a fenced-in backyard, so whenever I want to take them out to play it is in their in-ground pool, which, thankfully, is fenced-in.


Now, the pool. Mango has played with hoses and kiddie-pools before, sure. But this pool is 9 feet deep in the deep-end, 4-feet deep in the shallow. His first experience with this pool is something I will never forget.

Ginger loves this pool. You throw a ball or any toy in, and she jumps right after it, retrieves it, and comes right back out either through a ladder by the deep end or steps in the shallow. Mango loves playing with Ginger. So, the first time I brought them in to play, Mango was a bit cautious of the pool, but when he saw Ginger jump in and me encourage it, he thought it was fine. He didn't realize it was deep, though! So the poor guy jumps -- or more like falls -- into the pool, and because he doesn't know how to swim, he freaks out and flails around, trying to keep his head above water. I didn't have a bathing suit on at the time, so I had to jump into the pool myself and help the poor guy out.

After that, it was hard getting him to like the water. The next time, a couple days afterwords, ( I wasn't yet staying at their house when this first time happened, I was meeting with my Co-Leader) he was very hesitant about the water. I had my suit on, and my best friend was with me as well, and him and I were in the water, with Ginger and all of the other dogs in the pool with us, coaxing him in. When that didn't work, my friend scooped him up like a baby and just held him in the water. When he seemed fine with that, we allowed him to "swim" (we still had his torso, holding him up).

It was a slow process, but by today he's loving the water. Slowly, with enough coaxing, we got him used to climbing down the ladder and swimming in the shallow end (at first, he didn't know how to swim. He would try and touch the bottom of the pool, not trying to hold his back end up at all. Eventually, he figured out how to stay afloat and actually swim.). Next, he would kind-of jump in, kind-of climb down the steps to retrieve a ball just out of his reach. Then when he got more confident, he'd jump in off the side in both the shallow and the deep end. Now, after progressing from that, whenever I jump in (regardless of whether or not I have a toy) he jumps in too, just for the fun of it.

I have big scratches on me from him jumping in on top of me! At least we helped him conquer his fear; that's what good leader dogs do!