Swimming Lesson at Lake McCarrons

We've been having some crazy weather in Minnesota this year. I'm not complaining; just stating a fact. We've had cold-and-rainy immediately followed by warm-and-sunny, then a spate of pleasant, summery days and back to blustery, chilly weather. It seems to have no rhyme or reason.

 This Memorial Day weekend followed the "pattern:" a nice day on Friday followed by cool/rainy weather on Saturday...then Sunday it was in the upper 80s and humid.

What to do on an uber-hot, sticky day? Why, head to the lake, of course. And when you're covered in a fur coat, the lake water is the only way to go for exercise.

So the neighbors and I bundled the dogs (Gus & Zada) into the car and headed to Lake McCarrons. See, Gus had never been swimming – in fact, from what I understand he'd never even been in the water (on purpose) – so we took them to the boat landing for a swimming lesson.

Zada, of course, needed no prompting: I lobbed the tennis ball out into the waves and she plunged in. Since SHE seemed excited about the water, Gus bounded right in after her...until he realized the water got deeper. As soon as his short little legs couldn't reach the sandy bottom, he turned around for the safety of the shore.

But, each time Z would swim out to retrieve the ball, Gus would bound back out...just far enough to realize he still didn't really want to swim.

He did well for his first time "swimming," but he tired pretty quickly of the whole thing and decided being on shore was safer. Meanwhile, Zada kept retrieving (per usual) and wasn't too thrilled we weren't paying strict attention to her ;)

We weren't the only ones cooling our dogs off in the lake – when we first arrived there was already a pitbull on the scene (which ended up having to be leashed, since she wasn't dog-friendly...weird) and later a border collie joined us.

It was a good day for dogs to be swimming...and we humans didn't mind the wet legs and feet we got from the dogs shaking on us – it felt pretty good.

After about a half hour of swimming and enjoying the lake, it was time to go home...of course, we had to towel the dogs off before letting them jump into the car :)



***Note: these pictures aren't the best...some are pretty blurry since I was trying out a tele-converter for my 24-105mm lens.***