Bella, On our Watch,…

Ahh, Only the Good, Friday will be here when this hits the internet and Shelly wants us to join her in posting good thoughts, good things, good anything. It has been a good week, lost in software, one of my favorite places to be. But this is not about software. I decided to write a poem based on a photo taken over Christmas week when we were dog sitting our favorite Boxer, Bella, but ended up posting it on my poetry site instead, along with a picture of her, probably pining for our son and daughter-in-law.

What I don’t have is a picture of her holiday attempt to run on water.

When Bella wants to go out, the sliding door is opened and she saunters out, sometimes a run, depending on circumstances. There is a pool out there, but she does NOT like the water and avoids it. Of course, when we are left in charge she has to be “different” and runs straight across the free form pool, apparently to have a conversation with a dog across the canal.

There was a blue floating solar cover on the pool, and she made it about 2/3′s of the way across before it gave way to her weight. She made it to the edge, in spite of – or because of – the solar cover, and manage to get her two front paws up on the pool edge. She’s not as young as her slim figure leads one to believe. She’s gone gray in the face.

I was so grateful Leon was standing at the door with me, because he ran over, reached down and pulled her out of the pool. No, it wasn’t that easy, but he was strong enough to do it. Thank goodness they have her maintaining a lean, but healthy weight!.

Now I won’t tell you my opinion of those covers, since I previously had almost walked into the pool, even knowing it was there, because apparently my mind read it as “solid”. I have to wonder if a child would if someone had one in a home with children without a pool surround. They don’t have children. It is Only the Good Friday, though, and Bella may have done it anyway in her excitement. Lots of good, though:

• her having a healthy weight
• her not getting any more tangled up in the cover
• Leon’s being there and lifting her out without straining his back
• her running at that speed away from the glass doors, rather than toward them that night

So, now that you know it can happen, how would you have gotten her out if you had been alone without the strength to lift her out? (And yes, she scraped the inside of her leg apparently as he pulled her out, but otherwise was fine. I’ve thought about it several times and had a few ideas. But pre-planning could prove helpful!

The next few days Bella spent a lot of time studying or sniffing around the edge of the pool, it held new interest. We hadn’t finished straightening out the cover when this photo was taken.

And this wasn’t my first encounter with a dog in a pool on my watch….