Panic Room

The photos I am posting are from a trip today to what I have christened the Caribou Spit where I've been taking the dogs. The tide is in and quite high but since the drop off is so shallow I can walk out up to my thighs and stay relatively dry if I'm wearing shorts. Some of what you are about to see may be considered abuse but no dogs were harmed in the making of this post.

Ahem. Exhibit one. Leeloo. I'm sort of at a loss for words - mostly because everytime I look at this photo I start manically giggling. It's the eyes - they really are the window to the soul and according to Leeloo her soul has been sold to the devil. That would be me.

And Archer. I caught Archer in several different stages of opinion of the water. It started out with curiosity but quickly degraded into "You want me to WHAT?" You can see he is reconsidering his options at this point, probably because this is the stage at which he starts to get more buoyancy whereupon the eject button gets mashed a bunch of times and blind panic consumes him. He's in maybe a foot of water ... Halo did me proud by not complaining too much, coming in when I called and not panicking(much) when I took her deep enough to swim. Here she looks pretty darn cheerful but this was before the forced swim. After that I couldn't get her to come in without leading her by the collar.
Boy. This dog, I'm sure, has a small incarnation of Petal fused to his soul because he follows me no matter what. He got more and more comfortable with the water the longer we stayed and eventually I got him deep enough so he could attain a semblance of buoyancy. He was so proud of himself!I would like the dogs to learn to swim - I know they do it naturally for the most part but the hyper-ventilating panic they display when they lose contact with the sand is something I'd like to reduce. Only Halo and Archer got deep enough to actually swim and when they did I held them under the belly and chest so they felt more secure. Much splashing and desperation ensued but the longer I held and talked to them the more they calmed and settled into the water. They both swam for shore like crazy but the second time there was less panic ... wait til I get Boy deep enough ... he may try to drown me.