A Retriever Is a Water Dog

Tropical storm Hanna arrived in Delaware today, bringing buckets of rain.

Annie, our alpha dog, does not like rain, although she does love being dried off with a big towel. She's very ladylike and stays nice and clean.

Loki, on the other hand, loves being out in the rain. He loves coming in out of the rain. Sadly, he loves coming in out of the rain after he's been joyously digging in a hole full of muddy water.

At left you can see what I'll call Exhibit A. Please note that Loki's entire head is coated with mud. Cast your eyes downward and notice that his front paws are in a little mud puddle.

In our next picture, Exhibit B, we see Loki's calling card at the back door.








Exhibit C: Our happy, happy dog. After I took this picture, I used the towel in the background to try to reduce the impending damage to our floors, walls, furniture, and everything else in our house.

The towel went from a dusty rose to a chocolate brown, and pretty dang quickly, too.

As I type this at my desk, our little angel is curled up on a pile of formerly clean laundry on the floor near my feet. He's just looked over at his shoulder at me and blinked a couple times, before turning back around and getting down to the serious business of napping.

I am just so glad that housekeeping is so far down my list of priorities. On a day like today, you can get your knickers in a bunch and lose your temper pretty easily when you have a retriever. You could, however, resign yourself to a lot of laundry and related clean up and make sure you have photographic evidence. SpecialEd and I both had a serious case of deja vu: our Tucker did nearly the the same thing when he was Loki's age. The only difference was that nearly every inch of Tucker was coated with mud. Thoughtful, thoughtful Loki!