Sven threw the stick over the high grass and into the creek with a splash! This was immediately followed by a distinct 'KAPLOOSH! as the smaller of the two dogs, 'Dazee,' and 'Cubby,' hurtled herself off the bank and far out into the water to retrieve it; 'retrieving' being a far stretch of the imagination, for Dazee just grabs the stick, swims to the other side, deposits the stick there and then swims back eager for another dive.
This dog is the Border Collie/ cross dog we thought was water-shy. Cubby is a Lab/Chesapeake cross and born to the water; she has always leapt into the water with all-knowing abandon, but not Dazee. No Dazee is a latent water lover. Her preference was to merely run along the bank at high speeds catapulting her compact muscular body across beaver runways and rocketing along the undulations of the creek bank as though on a roller coaster track; she had blinding speed.
But it must have occurred to her that she had been missing something doing that and one day slowed down for a good look&see and discovered frogs, toads, snakes, and minnows peering at her from grassy glens and muddy shallows. Son she was edging out ankle deep into the water than up to her belly as Cubby would skyrocket over her like a black-coated gymnast and drown her with spray from one of her cannonball leaps into the creek.
Dazee would wait as Cubby came back to shore and then begin attacking her -- for the stick growling and barking, tugging at the stick in Cubby's jaws while Cubby tried to clamber up the bank to put the stick in my proximity; sometimes Dazee succeeded, sometimes not. regardless once she started paying attention to Cubby's efforts she started to become a little more brave. Once or twice, I picked her up and gave her a toss into the creek and she dog-paddled, 'Kaplunk,' 'kaplunk,' 'kaplunk,' to shore, then kept a wary eye on my location the rest of the day for there were frogs to catch and minnows to watch intently. One time the edge of the bank gave way under here and slid her into the water, but she never panicked. I think she started to build up her confidence around water and was slowly working her way into it.
One day she just swam. She swam smoothly and powerfully in the pool below the washed out beaver dam then got out, shook herself, and went about her business as if to say, "So what's the big deal with that?"
It wasn't until stick throwing started that she started to leave that 'ease-into it-' entry behind her. Watching Cubby vault the bank and repeatedly grab some air time she took the initiative and leaped off into space -- right on top of the stick as if that was what she conceived as the object of the whole thing.
Cubby soon learned that if she was able to locate the stick at all she'd better get there first before ol' Cannonball Cubby lobbed herself in from the North Forty. In fact it became so much of an event Dazee began targeting Cubby and would fly through the air legs splayed and land right on top of Cubby's head. Guess Cubby tired of such treatment one day and put a few teeth into Dazee's butt to make her stop her shenanigans; there was a brief fight, during which Dazee learned not to do that anymore; I haven't seen her do it since.
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