Sense of Adventure

Emma just petitioned pretty enthusiastically to come inside. I opened the door and it was raining. That made pretty clear why she wanted in so urgently.

That might seem strange. When we go walk one thing pretty much everyone notices is that she’s a Black Lab: she’s big, glossy black, got the tail and the “Labrador waddle.”

But she’s really a Black Sharpie - a term I coined to describe the intrinsically unlikely Black Labrador Retriever/Shar Pei cross. And therefore she’s a conflicted pup. Because Shar Pei are noted for disliking water. Whereas I think we all know Labs are for all intents and purposes amphibian.

So Emma is simultaneously drawn to water and repelled by it. Her solution? She’s a passionate wading dog.

She loves going into the ditches when we walk. It’s problematic this time of year when most of the irrigation ditches near my house are shut down. Indeed the one four or five blocks away never really flowed all summer. So when we walk on one of those ditches she can’t usually get a drink of water.

Fortunately, the clear ditch down by the RGNC levee bike path, across the bosque from the river, flows year-round. So when we walk there she can always drink.

And, of course, wade. For a time after I got her, in May of 2004, she didn’t like to go in water deep enough to wet her tummy. As long as it was just up her legs she’d splash around happily and slurp. When the fur on her underside started touching water, though, she’d want out.

Now she’s gotten to the point where she feels safe as long as her feet touch bottom. In the heat of summer, obviously, that lets her get even cooler. Although really she’s usually most avid to sit down in the water and dunk her fanny.

Problems arise, though, when water gets too deep. And gods forbid it get over her head.

A year or so ago we were walking one morning along what I call Bear’s Ditch, after Em’s predecessor, my much-beloved terrier/Chow cross Bear Dog - yes, my last two dogs have been crosses of the only two dog breeds in the world to have black tongues (because each was half Chinese Monster Dog) - whom Patricia Rogers appropriately dubbed the “little golden dog.” Bear loved to walk along that ditch; so does Emma.

The ditch that runs east-west at the north end, just south of Montaño, almost always has water running. It did that day, when the other ditch did not. So even though it wasn’t hot Emma was all ready for a dip and a drink when we got there.

We turned east toward RGB, a quarter mile or so away. The path there is more a broad, flat dirt road, a sort of tunnel between big cottonwoods - very picturesque in all seasons and for some reason especially serene. The ditchbank there was steep, though, not allowing easy access to the water. We kept coming to spots that looked likely to m; Emma would investigate and then refuse to go in the water.

Just when I was starting to feel the uncharitable urge to just give her, you know, a little nudge, she got impatient and decided to just go the hell in the water on her own. Unfortunately she lost her footing and fell in.

To my astonishment she vanished entirely from view with a large splash. That I wasn’t expecting: I had no idea the water was that deep. Of course, she didn’t either…

She bobbed right up again, of course. But of course she was totally wigged out. As you might expect from even a half-Lab she swims like a beaver. But she was basically flailing hysterically and not very effectually.

She did get her feet on the bank and her head safely above water. She’s strong as a draft horse, and usually I make her get herself out when she goes in the ditch, even if it’s steep. But she was still completely out of her head with panic.

My problem was that I was almost as out of control laughing at my poor little girl’s plight.

She was never in danger. I keep her on a flex-leash - wonderful invention! - and also an H-harness. The harness is ostensibly meant to allow her to be strapped in with a shoulder belt in a car seat, which indeed I do. But the main thing I use it for is to attach the leash instead of to her collar. Two big reasons for that: first, as someone who’s experienced near-fatal asphyxiation from asthma attacks, I’m phobic about pressure on my airway and don’t really want to try to control Emma by choking her. That seems unconscionably cruel to me.

The other? It’s easier to deadlift her out when she gets stuck in the darned ditch. Also safer - if I don’t like leading her by the throat, you can imagine how much I relish the prospect of dragging her 97.5 pound ass out the ditch by it*. Plus, for reasons I’ll leave to your imagination, I leave her collar as loose as I can without it slipping off over her head - fortunately she’s got a big head, as I believe I’ve alluded to, although she also has a neck on her like an ox - and if I put much pressure on it, it slides off anyway.

So I caught a grip. Emma got hoisted safely back to the bank. She was none the worse for her experience, and got over her terror fairly quickly, For my part I was able to keep from continuing to laugh out loud, although the occasional squeak did get out.

Since then she’s been very cautious about scouting out her footing. She’s particular, and wisely so, about making sure she can control her steps. She did misjudge this past summer and go in the drink again. But it wasn’t quite as traumatic for her.

Of course rain isn’t likely to freak her out the way going unexpectedly in water over her head will; a full-blooded Lab might have some problems with reflex drowning-fear if something like that happened to it. But Emma likes to be in control of her exposure to water.

So in she wanted, and in she came.

(Nothing earth-shaking here, obviously. I was just amused by the Em’s foibles. And, of course, not unaware that if I let too long go past without an Emma post, I’d lose all my traffic.

(Of course, Emma’s not the only eccentric critter in the Milán pack; I’m trying to type this one-handed because my black cat Squeak is lying next to the notebook computer - the warm breeze from the cooling-vent, don’tcha know - assiduously cleaning my left hand, which as usual fails to meet her exacting feline standards of hygiene. Of course, whom this really marks down as “eccentric” is, I suppose, open to question…)

*Updated 12/14/07. Added last two words to sentence for clarity.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Emma!, Life, Shameless Pandering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.