This afternoon I found myself in between projects. I just spent two days on the computer with a graphic design job, and this morning I tied up some other little loose ends. Paul is out of town on business, so it’s just me and the boyz. For some reason I couldn’t get myself going on either sculpting or glazing. In fact I’m feeling a tiny bit pressured about some of the glazing work I’ve taken on for this fall, I’ve got my entire family coming to visit this weekend, and our whole yard is a construction zone. What artist could feel good about doing anything creative on a day like this? If I don’t feel enthusiastic about the work it suffers. So it is best to just put it all aside until the mood or other factors change. And it is a gorgeous pre-fall day.

There was nothing else to do but play hooky for a few hours. I took the boyz to the East Boulder Rec Center’s excellent dog park, the one with the great swimming pond. Kanab doesn’t really like dog parks. For all that he is outgoing at home, I can tell he’s overwhelmed by lots of strange dogs and just stays by my side. I really thought he’d be the social dog, but neither of them really are. All they seem to need is each other. But at 1 pm in the afternoon on a Wednesday, we were the only people there. It was perfect.

KitKat of course loves the water and this was another chance to try to teach Kanab to swim. This is the same place where Kit discovered he loves to swim. I just kept throwing tennis balls in the water, and Kit would swim out for the ones in deep water and Kanab would get the ones he could wade out to. Then when everybody was relaxed I took Kanab’s head in my two hands, and gently drew him out with me into the place where he had to start paddling. He just looked up into my eyes and with absolute trust, let go of the ground under his feet. It was amazing. His instincts kicked in, and he was swimming! I let him make his way back to the shore, and we tossed balls in some more. Each time he seemed to let him self get in a little deeper. So I did the same thing again, leading him in with me. The rest is “history”!

We spent the next hour in wet muddy fun, both of them retrieving balls out of the deep water. When Kit discovered he loved the water, it was this joyful splashy doggie epiphany. He tends to get out to the ball and then forget himself in his pure bliss of swimming. Kanab walks in with deliberate care straight for his target and brings the ball all the way back. He takes it all very seriously but I could have tossed that ball in the water for him the whole rest of the day I think. It was hard to finally say, time to go! I can’t wait to take Kanab back there to see if he remembers this day. I wish I had the camera with me!

On the way back home, all three of us wet and smelly in the car, this pop song by a female singer came on the radio which has the refrain, “Breathe… just breathe.” (I wish I could identify the song or the artist.) That’s what we needed, a little Wednesday break to just breathe, and it resulted in a lovely breakthrough for Kanab. I now have two fishy dogs and all of us couldn’t be more pleased! We’re going out for pizza to celebrate, just the three of us.