Ummm... there's something in the water!!!!

This past Saturday I took Cricket to her first lake. I really didn't know how she would react to the water. To be honest, I half expected her to dip her toes a little bit and cautiously dance around in the shallow end. What I didn't expect was for my puppy to run and jump right into the deep end like some champion dock diving dog. I guess it's safe to say that she likes water then huh? If we get the chance I believe we will be making another lake adventure this upcoming weekend.

I still don't trust Cricket off leash right now especially since she's in her teenage phase where she suddenly forgets things she's been taught. Did you know that teenage dogs suddenly suffer from temporary hearing loss? It's a known fact that they tend to lose their hearing right around the time you need them to listen to you the most, a little convenient on their part wouldn't you think? For that reason, Cricket spent the day wallowing in the lake on a 30 foot lead.

I wasn't sure what would be a good toy option. There was the idea of a tennis ball though I'm not sure if they have a tendency to get waterlogged and I didn't want to risk losing whatever toy we brought. Maybe that makes me appear cheap, but oh well. Upon browsing around the local tractor supply store I had a brilliant idea. I bought a hard plastic remington dummy (also known as a bumper), one of those orange ones you see used to train gun dogs to retrieve ducks out of the water. There's a hole at the end of the dummy where you can tie something to it. I bought 50 feet of poly braid rope and tied one end to the dummy. The other end of the rope I attached a swivel clip like the clip you'd find on the end of a dog leash. I was able to clip the dummy to a nearby post with plenty of line to throw the toy pretty far into the water. I'm happy to say that we did not lose our water toy and I think this toy will have it's use in future aquatic adventures.

1 orange remington dummy = $10
50 feet poly braid rope = $4.99
1 Swivel clip = $1.50
Fun day out on the lake = Completely Priceless

So now that I know my little Mexican street dog is actually a fish, maybe one of these days soon I'll get to take her out in a kayak or canoe and see if she enjoys that at all. I really like that she loves being outdoors.