Proud Momma and Daddy

On Tuesday, Milt and I visited the dog park together, like usual.  With the hot summer weather blowing in, rather than walking to the grassy part of the park, Milt has been tugging and yanking to run to the swimming portion.  It really is rather nice that the park is located right on a lake.

To clarify, Milton absolutely loves water.  He is happiest when wet, which turns into muddy.  The only thing is he does not like to swim!  Milt prefers to wade about and keep all four paws firmly on the ground.  I have always blamed myself that he is not a natural born swimmer because when we drove up to my family's home in New York last summer, I think I was too forceful in my attempts to get him to swim.  In hindsight, I should have gradually walked our goldendoodle, who should instinctively like the water due to his mix, slowly into the lake.  Instead, I jumped in at the end of the dock, Milton was handed down to me, and I gently placed him in the water.  This was terrifying to him, no matter how soothing and calming we tried to act.  Hence, Milt has always preferred to stay wet in the shallows.

Despite the heat, this Tuesday was an odd day at the dog park because it seemed rather deserted.  Sometimes, if it is very hot, people and their dogs prefer to stay home, so the water entry only had one or two dogs over there, and they left soon after we arrived.  Milton was left with no playmates, but me!  I continued throwing Milt a tennis ball in the shallows, his preference, and I accidentally tossed it a bit too far.  I thought, drat, that ball is lost; Milt will never go past his head to retrieve it, but he did.  Next, I threw it a little bit further, and once again Milton swam out to get it.  Then I tried chunking the the ball really far, and Milt paddled and kicked all the way to grab that ball and back.  I cannot even describe how proud I was of our boy!

I can now say without hesitation that Milton the Goldendoodle is officially a water dog!  After his first few initial swims out, he just kept on going.  He is all up to speed now with all of his other water doggie friends.  Although, compared to the other dogs that were swimming (mainly Labs), Milt certainly lumbers around a bit more, which I attribute to all that fur weighting him down.  I think with time his stroke will even out more though. 

As for Momma and Daddy?  We are proud as peaches of our boy.  I have been grinning for the past two days and continuously watching the many, many snippets of video that I took.  It is so nice to have another swimmer in the family.  Summer just got a whole lot more interesting...!