Day 47: Back in the Kayak

Today Gracie took another step in discovering her inner water dog.  I always thought Golden Retrievers were the ultimate water dog.  I suppose this is because Bruce had a Golden when I met him--Groucho, a great name for a dog--that loved the water...and snow too.  Now that I am living with Gracie, my eyes have opened to the large number of spaniels enjoying the water in the area lakes, mostly English Springer Spaniels, though.  Since Gracie is such a pleasantly agreeable dog, I have been determined to win her over to water.  "Use a ball," Bruce suggested last time we were down at the lake.  Gracie does like shagging a ball, so this seemed like an excellent suggestion to me.

Gracie says, "All right.  I'm ready.  Let's go!"

Because this morning was warm and windless, we went kayaking.  The whole process of getting the kayak off the car and to the water, our life jackets on, and Gracie and myself into the boat without tipping over went very smoothly.  The lake was like glass.  I paddled along the shore, and Gracie seemed very relaxed, more relaxed than the first time we went out.  As I've commented before, she likes the familiar.  She doesn't like surprises.  Fortunately, I lead a very repetitive life.  It was about 8:00 a.m.  A few people were swimming across the lake.  Otherwise, we had the place to ourselves.  Suddenly, Gracie sat up and gave me her "I need something" look.  We were in the middle of the lake at that point.  I stopped paddling.  She put her paw on my life jacket.  Clearly, she needed to go in to relieve herself.  We paddled to beach and got out.
I had put a ball in my pocket before leaving the house.  When Gracie and finished in the grass up by the path, we returned to the beach.  The ball was a great idea!  She batted it around a bit; then she picked it up and carried it back to the beach.  This was so cute that after a few times, I took my cell phone out of my life jacket pocket and videoed her.  This is not easy since she is always so close to me, either because she wants to be or because, like then, I have her tethered to me.  I figured I recorded enough, thought, to be able to edit it together into a sort of cohesive whole. 

Sadly, I did not have the memory chip in my cell phone and cannot share Gracie in her orange life jacket playing with the blue tennis ball on the beach.  Next time.