Yessir, that's my dog!

I realize that everybody out there who is a pet owner has a personal bias regarding his or her dog, cat, llama or parakeet. They find a way to endear themselves to us and regardless of how insane they make us with their idiosyncrasies, we tolerate them and enjoy having them around. Currently (with the exception of three or four fish--I lost count as to how many have made the flush lately) we only have one pet, our beloved Yellow Labrador Retriever, Abby.
For those of you who have met Abby, you have probably formulated your own opinions about her. She tends to be a little bit overfriendly with any house guests. She tends to eat far too much. She tends to knock over the trash can within twenty seconds of our departure. She tends to make herself comfortable with complete disregard for anybody else's welfare or the long-term survival of any furniture in our home. She tends to bolt out the front door with speed of cheetah whenever the crack between the door jamb and our left leg is larger than three inches. She tends to sleep at least as much as Grampa G with a belly full of ambien, lunesta, valium and Southern Comfort. She tends to destroy anything green in the backyard for no apparent reason. And she tends to be carry her weight in much the same manner as Chris Farley did.
But despite all of these slight character flaws, she is a beloved member of our family. She is about as much a Yellow Lab as Kim is. She refuses to fetch, and when she does, her inclination is to bring whatever it is back with absolutely no intention or returning it for another throw. I used to live with three labs (Black, Chocolate and Yellow) in Florida, and they were true to form. We lived on three acres (one for each of them I suppose) and every day, they would still insist upon breaking out and exploring the territory around them. They would fetch anything at any time, whether it be a frisbee, a piece of rope, a decoy, a tennis ball, or a stick. I could even practice chipping golf balls and one of them would gladly chase my golf balls all day and place it back at the center of my stance with the excitement of a kid on his first day at Disney World just for the opportunity to go and chase it again. Abby--not so much.
The other characteristic of Labs is their love of the water. All of our Labs in Florida had an insane love of the water. When I was in the process of building my first house in Tampa and had to allow two of my friends to babysit my dog for a month while the house was being completed, she got to stay on the banks of the Weekie Watchie River. There was a three foot drop from the embankment on the side of the river behind my friend's house and they would spend two to four hours a day bouncing a tennis ball off the edge of the wall into the river, and Godiva would run at a full sprint and leap of the ledge about 15 feet into the river to retrieve the ball. She would entertain the boats that went by and she would puke up gallons of water, pee thirty or forty times a day and have the runs for the entire month, but you couldn't make her get out of that water for anything. By the end of her stay, she was jumping off a 10 foot high deck at the neighbors house just to thrill seek. I could spray a high pressure hose in Godiva's face and she would whimper when I shut it off. In this regard, Abby at least is part lab. She loves the water, but we have not had too many great chances to expose her to real swimming. Her experience has been to jump into the tub, splash in a puddle or two that forms in our backyard, run through a wash, and occasionally when she has been truly well-behaved, we fill Lauren's baby pool out back and let her soak herself. She does enjoy emptying her waterbowl on the kitchen floor and laying in the pool she creates, but that might go back to one of those idiosyncracies that I was referring to earlier.
So last weekend, while we were forced out of our house so that another over-perfumed realtor could spend three and a half minutes rummaging through our home with some deadbeat in tow, we decided to take Abby down to Lake Pleasant for a couple of hours. I have been in Arizona for nearly five years now, but have still never been to Lake Pleasant. I went to Lake Saguaro one time on a manager outing with work a couple of years back, but other than that, we have not enjoyed the splendor that is the reservoir system of greater Phoenix. Lake Pleasant is less than ten minutes from our house, but we were unsure whether or not there were good areas for Abby to swim or walk, and in the summer, the lake is overrun with 30000 boats each weekend, so there very could have easily been no good trails at all. But since we had some time to kill, we thought, "why the hell not?"
We pulled into the park and drove around a little bit. It was a relatively quiet day, as the water temperature is still a bit frigid for our delicate Arizona bodies. There were still quite a few boaters and campers out there, but not nearly to the extent that there will be in a couple of months when there is no way to escape the scorching temperatures. We were able to find a quiet inlet with no other cars in sight and decided to get out and walk around. I was confident that Abby would test the water temperature and splash around a little bit, but I was a little bit less than assured that she would actually delve beyond the shore where she might be forced to paddle. I was also at least equally confident that my two children would wade out into the water at least up to their shorts with absolute disregard for their shoes, but that of course is a sucker bet.
Just as I suspected, Abby bee-lined it for the water. I do recall a walk in Sedona a few months back where Abby enjoyed splashing through Oak Creek for a couple of miles. Here at Lake Pleasant, she walked along the banks and went in up to her knees. I made the foolish attempt at getting her to swim out a few yards by tossing a red tennis ball into the depths, but that ball would never be heard from again. She took a few large gulps of lake water and ran back to shake her soaked body at the closest one of us she could find. I grabbed a stick and threw it out into the water and she chased after it, as she does with any stuffed animal in the house. She got close to the stick and turned around. So just on an off chance, I grabbed another piece of wood and threw it again in the shallow water and she actually went and picked it up, and returned in my general direction. This usually is followed by a tug of war, but much to my surprise, I was able to wrestle the stick from her without the usual fight.
I decided to throw the stick a little deeper, where she would be forced to leave her feet and swim a few yards. She took off immediately and pounced through the water until she got to the point that her feet were no longer firmly on the soft sand beneath her weighty frame. After a momentary hesitation and a look back to Kim for reassurance, she lifted her feet in the water and swam ten feet to the stick and retrieved it. Grunting and gasping like she had just crossed the Atlantic, she brought the stick back and soaked me as she shook her drenched fur intentionally in my general direction. I picked up the lumber and threw it out twenty yards into the water and she bounded away without a moment's thought. She swam like a champ with her meaty paws churning water behind her and her tail serving as a rudder, she looked like she knew what she was doing. Quite honestly, I believe that she knew what she was doing, and she was chasing sticks out into the clear depths of that inlet for a good 30 minutes.
Eventually another car came by and we packed up the soaking children and drowned dog and loaded up the minivan. Abby managed to puke a couple of times before she got into the van and she peed a good gallon of lake water, but I can't recall a happier moment for that dog. She was in her glory. She had, if only for a moment, managed to achieve something that none of us truly believed she was capable--acting like a real Lab.
We drove the van up the road a little farther trying to find another quiet spot and ended up on a two mile hike down into a valley where there were a couple of guys fishing off a bridge. Abby of course had to splash around there as well and Lauren became absolutely exhausted being carried all the way down and back up again. You can only imagine what kind of strain riding on Dad's back while being forced to hold on to his throat for 45 minutes can cause. Those of you who have not experienced such a thing, believe you me, it is no picnic and I don't recommend putting yourself through that kind of stress. I thank God that Lauren had the strength to hold on all that way and the energy to kick my kidneys as much as she needed to as she screamed "Giddy-up Pig" as the only way to motivate me back up that gorge. Bless her little heart.
We found our way back to the sanctuary that is our Caravan. We filled the van with the stench of wet dog and the pounds of caked-on dirt from the kid's shoes. Abby climbed up into the back seat and had herself a well-deserved rest. Well, I guess she rested until I slammed on the brakes at the light at Carefree and I-17 and she exited a dead sleep and came flying up two rows to join us in the front seat. She may have dislocated her hip for all I know, but as she limped into the house a few minutes later and found a vacant spot on the carpet in front of the TV, she sprawled out for the next 72 hours without moving a muscle, including the enormous smile of satisfaction that comes with knowing you did what they say couldn't be done. Abby is indeed a lab.