Trip to the lake, round 2

Equipped with a better life jacket, we went back down to the lake today. My mom kept insisting it would be too cold (it has been chilly the past few days, getting downright cold at night) but I had faith it would be warm enough. Sure enough, it was really quite lovely – and being that it only got up to about 80 (as opposed to 100 from last time), hardly anybody was on the beach and fewer people were out on their boats, so it was just generally quieter and calmer.

I got him there, strapped on his life jacket, went out until I was about chest deep in the water… and let him go. And he swam. Pretty well actually. He still kind of bobs his butt down, checking for ground – he knows eventually he will hit shallows and he can start walking, so it’s a kind of funny swim, but swim he did. And I’m pretty sure he liked it, more importantly. I still can’t get him to grab his bumper, or ball-on-a-rope, when he’s in the water, but we were playing in the water (I was splashing him and he was biting the water.) Also, he has learned that when he hears the sound of a boat, he needs to IMMEDIATELY run down to the lakeside because that means a bunch of big waves he can play in are about to hit the beach. It’s actually hilarious and I love it. Seriously, we were sitting up on the little ledge drying off, a boat went by, his ears pricked up, and he jumped down and almost dragged me to the water so he could play in the waves. He likes to go in the water about chest-deep but he still isn’t sure about swimming out on his own. He tried it once or twice and changed his mind and turned back around immediately and went back to shore. I’m not terribly offended by this, the idea of Dock Dogs is to get the toy and come back to the ramp anyway, not just swim out to the blue beyond LOL.

ANYWAY. The pics. I was desperate to get a photo of him swimming so I took a chance and carried my point & shoot out with me… and luckily I did not drop it in the lake.

Playing in the waves.

Getting his feet wet then coming back on the beach.

Dirty dirty puppy!

This is Payton’s face as I am carrying him out into deeper water… not kidding LOL.

SWIM GO GO SWIM SWIM SWIM GO GO

A better one – for some reason he doesn’t want to swim to me, he wants to swim next to me, so this was hard to get. He REALLY has fun if I put him in the water then I swim along next to him. He starts smiling and he swims faster like it’s a race. Obviously I couldn’t take a picture like that though (I dunno how to do a backstroke or anything!)

Little paw prints in the sand. Just for my scrapbook.

His life jacket was off so he could dry out a bit and a boat went by so DOWN BY THE WATER WE GO sans life jacket.

He even climbed in without his life jacket on, which is good news. I didn’t ask him to swim without his life jacket because I could tell he was getting tired, and I didn’t want him to get tired and start sinking without the jacket – so we left it on to make sure it was a good experience until the end.

Poking around in the shallows some more…

More dirty puppy.

This happened a lot LOL. Unfortunately I can’t take him off lead here so it just kept happening… I always had to make sure before I let him go to swim that I had the leash so he wouldn’t get tangled in it. =P

Life jacket… doing it wrong. I asked him if he wanted to go back in and he hopped up for me to put his jacket back on, so we went back in one last time.

Before we left. I ‘shopped out the stupid lead because it’s otherwise such a great photo. ;P He really, truly does like the lake. I’m glad.

And finally:

THIS is the best swimming shot, but unfortunately it was blurry. =< One day I will have somebody come with me and stand on the shore and get shots with a zoom lense... one day...