Crazy Around The Pool
My six year old Cardigan Corgi Ruckus runs madly, at top speed, around and around the pool when anyone's in it. If you sit down to read for a bit, he tries to be patient waiting for you to jump in, although you can feel him intently staring, but if you move a muscle he leaps up. If you pause at either end, he gives you a little jump to keep you moving.
He can sense from a dead sleep downstairs if my husband is putting on his bathing suit upstairs and he will be jumping up and down for joy until my husband finally gets down and heads for the pool.
Needless to say, we have to spell the words pool, swimming, bathing suit, and he will pay close attention even if he hears something along the lines of "I think I'll go upstairs and change". If anyone tries to circumvent him by going out another door or changing outside, HE KNOWS, and will run to the back door to be let out.
This is all fine, when we're just taking a leisurely swim for a few minutes at a time, it keeps him as fit as a marathoner and his nails need very little clipping. But we definitely can't swim laps (not that I ever do very many) because he will wear himself out, and if there's a party or people over, he will run for hours. If people are in the pool, he has to be there.
I take him out of the pool area for rests -- it's not easy! -- and even try to take him upstairs and keep him with me for a while sometimes, but he will cry and pace and scratch at the door, he MUST be at the pool!
He seems to be having the time of his life, but "why does he do it/what makes him do it?" Is this some sort of atavistic herding of cows in Welsh streams stirring in his genes or ... or what? Our Welsh Springer used to get very excited at the pool, too, but he liked to swim. Ruckus just likes to herd us back and forth and race around the pool. I wish he would get in and take a little dip to cool himself off! But that is not, apparently, part of the ritual.
Layne Evans, Norwalk, Connecticut
August 2012
22.08.2012
