I've made a similar post before, but we've made some progress this summer on the puppies swimming in the pool. Neither Piper nor Owen really liked the pool at the beginning much to our dismay. To say that Madison loved the pool is an understatement and we enjoyed the time that we spent with him throwing his floatie and then watching him bring it back over and over and over.
Piper is definitely the one who enjoys the pool more than Owen. She is always looking for a ball to bring to you to throw into the pool and will run around like crazy until she (or you) find one for her. At first it was only a ball that she was interested in but just recently she started fetching a floatie similar to the one that Madison used. She loves it too. Here she is trying to pull it to her at the side of the pool so that she doesn't have to jump in to get it. One of her smarter moments.
New this summer is her ability to jump off the side of the pool to fetch her ball or floatie. Before she would only go in through the shallow end and swim to her ball but now she will literally leap off anywhere around the pool. She prefers to leap all the way to the ball and sometimes that it more than half way across the pool. I've honestly worried a couple of times about her jumping too far and hitting her head!
She never tires of this and always brings it back for one more throw.
Now for Owen....he's making baby steps in this process of getting to like the pool. For now, he prefers to use it as a giant water bowl and will drink out of it frequently. Probably not the best idea since it's salt chlorinated but it's hard to catch him every time and stop him.
If you "help" him, he will get in the shallow beach part and stand. The incredible heat and humidity of the summer is probably helping him with this. He is getting braver and will not just immediately jump out when you let go of him now though.
He is a super fast swimmer when he actually takes off. Now if we can just get him to slow down and enjoy it we'll have two dogs that love the water.
Just this past weekend, Owen made a huge step and actually swam across the pool to me all on his own. Emory was trying to catch him and just sit in the shallow part with him to cool off and Owen ran from him, jumped in the pool and swam to me. It was definitely a first...and then he did it again later in the day. Maybe there is hope that we will have two dogs who love to "swim-swim" after all!
