Sunday, January 31, 2010

A wet dog and soccer parents

As I was leaving Sunnybrook dog park today I met up with a couple who were leaving at the same time.  I recognized their dog as he'd been playing with mine for a while in the park.  They asked if I was their son's soccer coach.  Sure enough, I recognized this nice couple who I hadn't seen for quite a years.

As we were getting our dogs to our cars, we talked about our dogs, and they said they had recall problems with their dog (like mine) and it had ran off a while back from this parking lot.  They only got it back after it had found another dog of interest.  I said I got a little worried about Kooper at regular parks (not officially off-leash, fenced parks) and said once he got bored of other dogs and we were in a regular park, it gets very difficult to get him back.

We said our goodbyes and I began the tricky process of taking the leash off Kooper and closing the (station wagon) trunk.  I noticed there was another dog in the parking lot and sure enough it was too big a temptation for Kooper.  He leapt out of the trunk and went to say hello.  As I approached, he ran off down the nature trail toward another dog.  From there he quickly noticed the stream and started exploring the soft ice along the bank of the stream.  I noticed the water was moving quickly and began to really worry.  He was oblivious to my calls and ran further upstream as I approached.  I couldn't get very close as the bank was steep and the ice, I'm guessing, too thin to hold me.  The game continued and sure enough he got too close to the edge and slipped into the stream.  I'm not certain how deep it was, but I was fearing the worst.  He was obviously very surprised when he fell in, but luckily it only took a couple of tries over about 10 seconds and he jumped out and ran up the bank to the trail and met up with another dog.  I grabbed him and walked back to the car.  He didn't seem cold at all and for him it appeared his adventure was just another walk in the park.  I hope he learnt a lesson.

No comments: