More Doodle Than Lab

This being a three-day weekend I actually got Russ to not work one day and we went to the farm.  The biggest draw for Russ to the farm is that we can let Shay Shay run around free.  Russ loves to throw the tennis balls across a field and have her chase them.  Shay does not have the best eyesight so sometimes she misses where they go and just looks at us with the “like throw me a ball already” look on her face.  It’s hard to convince her that we already threw the ball and have to go and retrieve it ourselves and throw it again.

Shay is officially thirty third generation labradoodle but I think somewhere about the twenty fifth or sixth generation the lab part was dropped out of her gene line.  See Shay likes to chase a ball and even pick it up and run with it, but she is not so good at bringing it back to us.  Maybe that means she is half retrieving it.

It is not the lack of ball return that really shows Shay’s miniscule Labrador genetic makeup, but her dislike of swimming.  Today was a warm day.  In fact I feel like it was the warmest day I experienced this summer season, what with North Carolina never getting close to 100 degrees all year.  So while we were at the farm we decided to go swimming.  The pool was pleasantly cool, a treat for Labor Day weekend.

Carter and I jumped in and Shay paced by the side of the pool.  The sun was beating on her dark brown fur.  She looked at us having fun splashing with our cousins who were visiting.  I reached for Shay and she tentatively allowed me to pick her up and bring her in the water with me.  Her immediate dislike of the water was apparent from the way she dug her sharp nails in to my shoulder trying to climb on top of my head to get as much of her body out of the water as possible.

I hugged her shivering body and calmly told her it would be all right.  Her stiffness subsided a little.  After a few minutes I pulled her away from clinging to me and let her go forcing her to swim.  Her frantic doggy paddle kept her head above water, but the panicked look in her eyes made me grab her right up and put out on the side of the pool.  I am almost sure I heard her sigh in relief.  It does not matter to me that she neither retrieves nor swims, but I think we need to rename her breed.  I think that Lapradoddle is much more fitting for she is a dog who is happiest sitting in Russ’ lap.