It’s Spring in Indiana

In Indiana, our calendar has months like the rest of the world, but they’re called January, February, Mud, Tornadoes, Welcome Race Fans, June, July… The month known as April in other places is characterized here by severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, which is not only murder on dogs with thunder phobias (like my Valenzia), but means that occasionally, you might need a rubber raft to get to the mailbox.

I was at a quilt show this past weekend (I’m on the board of the local historical society, which sponsored it), and saw this twist on the classic “when life gives you lemons” adage:

When Life Hands You Scraps, Make Quilts

It’s a nice positive-thinking mantra, but today I made up a new variation: When life dumps four inches of rain on you, teach your dogs to snorkel.

Dobermans are a notoriously fussy breed; they generally don’t like rain, cold or mud. So when I looked out the window after a night of heavy rain and discovered that my normally 3-foot-wide creek was now running about 200 feet wide and had submerged a good percentage of my property, I knew that getting the dogs to go outside was going to be an adventure. When I opened the back door, Valenzia eyed the standing water outside and then turned to me with a look of utter disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding, Mommy,” the thought bubble over her head read. “I don’t have to pee that bad.”

Outside, the dogs let their feet get wet only long enough to dive into the shelter of a dog house (positioned on higher ground, out of the flowing water). When I went outside to survey the water risk to the rest of my property, Valenzia poked just her nose out of the opening and woofed at me in protest, and Spica was nowhere to be seen. Neither dog wanted to move around the yard. I couldn’t blame them; it was 45 degrees, raining, and there was half a foot of water covering most of their running space.

But I had to leave eventually, and I really needed the dogs to stretch their legs and relieve themselves before I closed them back in the house for the day. Being a sneaky and conniving individual by nature, I ran back up to the house and filled my pockets with oversized flavored dog biscuits that I’d won in a raffle somewhere. My dogs don’t often get bulky carb-loaded treats like this, but they were just big and lightweight enough that I thought they might float.

(And I also took my camera, which should tell you something else about my personality.)

I ran along the outside of the fence, my boots sinking in ankle-deep water and mud, and called the dogs to run with me to the part of the yard that was flooded. They’re used to getting “outside treats” (raw snacks too messy for indoor chewing) at the gate, so they careened down the waterslide to see what I had. Valenzia barked in irritation as she tried to leap from tuft to tuft of tall grass to avoid the water, while Spica, who is a little less fussy, ran straight into the mess:

Spica running in water

When the dogs reached the fence where I stood, I asked for sits. (I didn’t know what marvelous muscle control Valenzia had in her hindquarters; she managed to fold her legs under in such a way that she was indeed sitting, but with her tail hovering a quarter inch above the surface of the water, though her legs were submerged to the hocks.) Then I showed the dogs a biscuit and hurled it out into the yard, where it landed with a dramatic splash.

Valenzia glanced from me to the biscuit with a very eloquent expression, but an instant later she dove out into the flood and began scenting. The first biscuit stayed afloat, and she was able to tiptoe out to where it was sailing and gulp it off the surface of the water. The next one sank in an eddy, and when she’d located it by sniffing the surface of the water, she stuck her head underneath and rooted around for it. Soon she was “snorkeling” every time I tossed a treat, though still making a valiant effort to keep her feet out of the water:

Valenzia snorkeling

Ironically, Spica — who didn’t mind getting wet as much as Valenzia — didn’t want to chase treats into the water. I tossed hers into the shallower areas, where they sat in the grass and she could pick them up without submerging.

When I ran out of treats, the dogs, who had apparently forgotten that they were Dobermans and therefore didn’t like water, engaged in a little chase and play session:

Valenzia and Spica playing

This lasted only until I turned back toward the house, at which point they stopped to watch me leave — and suddenly Valenzia realized her feet were wet and she was cold, and she bolted back to her doghouse in shrieking protest.

So, no earth-shattering changes. I wasn’t really expecting a couple of dog biscuits to overturn generations of selective breeding and years of conditioning. But at least the dogs got their daily exercise.