Audrey swimming lessons

There are breeds of dogs who LOVE the water, and then there are those who don’t!

I’m not really sure about the Cocker Spaniel breed… I know my Cocker when I was a young kid would jump in the pool after me if I coaxed her or she thought I was in trouble.  But at that, she learned a very valuable lesson, how to swim to the ladder and either get out or cling on until someone could come get her.

Well our current pool is an in ground pool but it has a liner.  Last fall a glass candle got broken in the pool so this spring we drained the pool completely and used the shop vac to make sure there wasn’t still broken glass in the deep end.  Good thing too, because there was :(, hubby cut his foot on it.  So anyway we got that all cleaned up and started adding water to the pool again, but apparently not fast enough.

The Thursday night before the 4th of July and our party on the 2nd, we noticed the pool had a slow leak.  We finally noticed there was a big dumb hole in the liner :(.  It had dry rotted while filling it back up :(.  Bummer.  Then the whole water debacle of our party weekend… I can tell you, the darn pool has been frustrating!

But since the pool liner is bad, we figured now was as good of time as any to make sure Audrey knew how to swim and either cling to the ladder or crawl out in case she ever falls in… which she fell in on the pool tarp over the winter, but there was enough there she could stand on… unlike the pool being completely un-covered.

So I got in the shallow end, and had hubby “throw” her in the deep end. (he didn’t really throw her, but helped her in)

And I stood in the shallow end coaxing her to me.

I can tell you, she doesn’t like water.

but she finally got the hang of “doggy paddling”.

And I swear right here she’s telling me to “Eat Dirt”

but isn’t she cute!

Then I had her swim to the ladder and work on getting herself out.

It worked too 🙂

Except for this round.  She swam about 4-5 times to me.

And time to shake it off!  And run away from the crazy man and the crazy camera lady.

Right now, this is what our pool looks like… It’s really sad!