Rudy Loves to Swim

Rudy loves the water. As soon as we get to the lake house, he is ready to go down to the dock and jump in the water. We have never taken a boat ride with a dry Labrador Retriever aboard because as soon as Rudy gets near the lake he goes in for a quick swim.

Rudy's favorite activity at the lake is retrieving his throw toy. He has an orange toy that Ken bought him as a souvenir from the Labrador store on Long Beach Island one summer. (I wonder if we are the only ones who buy souvenirs for our dogs?) He jumps from the dock and swims out to get the toy. He then comes around the side of the dock to the rocks to climb back on dry land. He would do this a hundred times. It is a game that never grows old.

Beginning last summer, we realized that he would keep it up so long that he could hurt himself. He will swim to the point of exhaustion. We started limiting the number of times that he retrieved the toy from the lake. Rudy doesn't understand this and hates the forced rest times when he has to rest on the dock while his toy sits on the roof of the boat house. That is to prevent Rudy picking up the toy, dropping it off the end of the dock and then diving in to retrieve it. Even limiting the number of jumps and swims, Rudy is sometimes sore and tired at the end of the day and is reluctant to jump into and out of Ken's car when we go back to Wooster. It is a sort of balancing act: how much fun can you have before it becomes too much fun?