That's right, this week Murphy and his friends headed to the local pool!

But first off, there are more than 60 photos on this page, so those of you with slower connections, I apologize for what will probably be a very slow loading page.

So let's start at the very beginning. Karen Magnussen Pool is closing for a major cleaning and upgrade, so they decided to open the pool up for dogs as a fundraiser for our local shelter. For a donation we got one and a half hours at the wave pool.

Below we have the crowd outside, minutes before the doggie swim started. It was crazy out there, with a few dozen dogs with their owners, plus the rest of their families. People from one year to 70 years old, dogs from Miniature Poodles and Miniature Dachshunds to Labrador Retrievers and Huskies.

There was panic for a few minutes when the rumor went around that the people might not get to go in the water with their dogs, so I went in and talked to the people in charge to straighten things out. The poor rec center worker looked at me like I was crazy, and answered; "You can go in if you *want* to?!". I assured her that everyone was assuming that we humans were going in.

And as you can see from the above photo, lots of people went in, including plenty of people who hadn't dressed for the occasion! Look at the crowd, it was insanely packed:

Murphy was understandably overwhelmed at first, this being his first time in a pool, not to mention being intimidated by the mob that surrounded him.

But he stepped up and took a swim, featured below. Granted, I walked him out into water that was deep enough for him to have to swim out of, but as we saw in the previous update, Murphy has no trouble swimming in deep water.

Murphy was far from the only hesitant dog. Check out this poor dog below! According to my mother, who took this picture, the whole family was trying to get this dog into the water.

Here are several other dogs we saw in the pool. Check out all the life jackets! Several safety minded owners...or maybe they were using the jackets as water wings? There was also a little Miniature Wirehaired Dachshund in a life jacket, but I missed capturing him on film.

 

Below we have me trying again to convince Murphy that this pool thing is a lot of fun:

Eventually he did learn that the pool was a fun place to be, and swam a little more and more as time went by. I decided to leave his leash on him for the most part, just for safety sake. There were too many doors he could have escaped out of, and so many people that he could have gotten lost very easily. Plus it wasn't like I could run after him on a soaked pool deck, so the leash stayed on, even if it did just float behind him a fair bit.

Below, Jason and I exiting the main pool while Murphy swam his way out. I'm not sure what I was laughing at, but the whole afternoon was pretty funny, so it's no surprise to see me in such a state.

After checking out the main pool, we thought that Murphy might better enjoy the slower pace of the baby pool. It's located up against the front wall of the pool area, so you can sit in there and watch the main pool. Murphy was indeed happier in this little shallow pool:

Look at the smile on his face, he was a lot less tense than he'd been in the big main pool:

After a few minutes rest in the baby pool we headed back to the main pool, where Murphy splashed around:

 

After maybe 30 minutes, guess who arrived but Maggie, Janine and Scott.

We let them get settled in, take in all the craziness around them, and after a little while we met up in the baby pool:

 

We even brought out the treats, my father throwing them to me from the other side of the little pool, but with little improvement in posing:

Judging from these photos, it appears that a decent sitting photo was never taken. Or I might have just missed it while filtering through the nearly 300, and I'm not exaggerating, 300 photos that we had from this day at the pool.

Later, Jason, Murphy and I headed back over to the deeper pool. Here we are in one little corner of it that hides around a little bend. You can't tell from this photo, but Murphy was splashing like a mad devil here, getting water all over that woman in red's face. She seemed annoyed. My God, getting wet in a pool! Imagine that!

A little floating raft was nearby, so Jason and I decided to plop Murphy on:

He stayed on for less than a minute, and then decided he wanted out:

We headed over to the hot tub, where we dropped Jason off to warm up for a few minutes. Murphy and I then wandered over to the therapy pool. It's this little warm pool, with whirlpool jets and a ramp going all around it so wheelchairs can get in. I assume that this pool is supposed to be used for physical therapy. But it worked well for the dogs, as the people were able to walk their more reluctant dogs slowly in. The pool gets gradually deeper and deeper as you head around it. Jason met up with us there, and my parents circled around the pool, taking lots of pictures of us. I felt like we were on some sort of press junket, there were so many people with cameras. And who doesn't want dozens of cameras snapping pictures of them while wearing a bathing suit? Luckily Murphy doesn't have such issues, being both in good shape and donning a very thick and furry bathing suit. Yet more benefits of being a dog!

Murphy wasn't too sure about this bubbly pool, and this ledge he's leaning on here was very narrow, so he had to be coaxed up onto the edge:

But once Jason and I got onto the ledge, he hopped up. Then I showed him that the bubbly pool was ok:

We spent the rest of the time at the pool going back and forth between the big pool and the baby pool. Below we have Jason, Murphy and me watching all the action in the main pool, while the waves were on. When the pool was super crowded like this Murphy preferred to just sit back and watch all the action.

How cute is that, a pug on a raft in a wave pool? He wasn't really all alone, you can see the fingers of the boy he was with on the left side of the raft.

A little while later Murphy decided that rafts weren't so bad, and thought he'd try getting on one by himself:

I gave him a little boost up once I realized what he wanted, then he started acting like he was king of the castle:

To the left we have Murphy barking at a passing Labrador, to the right we have him surveying all who swam around him. Below, a more panoramic shot of his new kingdom:

So both Maggie and Murphy seemed to enjoy themselves a little more. We were able to get the dogs together for some swimming:

As this photo above shows, Maggie really took to the water - look at her go!

As we were playing in the water this guy to your left came over to us. He had a camera and a microphone, so I'm assuming he's some sort of reporter, but we've yet to see any footage of the event on tv. So it's entirely possible that he's some psycho who stakes out pools photographing women who swim with dogs. He does have that sort of innocuous yet creepy look about him, but then again I'm paranoid about these things, so let's get back on topic before I go off and create a huge back story to this most probably harmless photographer. At any rate, Murphy swam his way, so he got that on film, and asked me how Murphy was enjoying himself. I just told him that Murphy was loving it like all the dogs were, and tried to get out of his lens' view as quickly as possible. It was bad enough that I'd been captured in my bathing suit for still photos, let alone being broadcast on tv! I'm not sure if he spoke to Scott at all, or captured Maggie during all of her swimming. But as you can see below, Scott and Janine were right there with Maggie:

With the pool so much emptier we were all better able to enjoy ourselves. Murphy and I got to chat a bit:

What you missed in the above photo was Murphy fully submerging me...and Jason laughing at us.

A few minutes later, Murphy spotted a tennis ball in the water and decided he'd shunned balls long enough. So he pounced on it, making it roll end over end:

Then he realized he might have to dunk his head to get the ball, and went for it:

Murphy and I finally emerged from the pool at 5:45, 15 minutes before the swim was over and the pool was closed. By that time not one but two dogs had pooped in the pool, that I'd seen for myself, and we figured there's only so much fecal matter you can safely swim in! Not to say that the owners and guards weren't doing an admirable job of skimming the poop out, but still, it was clearly time to go.

I gathered Murphy up, my parents dried him off while Jason and I got changed, we said our goodbyes to Maggie, Janine and Scott, and headed for home!

So that's it, what must be my single largest one page update ever! I'm heading back to Children's Hospital this week, and from here on in my schedule is going to be busy enough to preclude me from being able to do such fancy updates. So I hope you all enjoyed this one!

Email me!

Meghan

Here's the link to the next update: November 22, 2003
Here's the link to the previous update: September 3, 2003

Home | Latest news | From the beginning | Origins | What kind of dog is that? | Colours of cockers | Cocker links