Meet Beau, my 3 year old Weimaraner! My sister and my parents dog Trixie also joined us yesterday for Beau's first trip to a dog park. He's done the doggy daycare thing and whatnot, but I was prepared for this to be an experience. And by experience I meant for my sister and all the other spectators, as I expected to be running around screaming at him. Unfortunately he doesn't get off his leash much when we're outside because we lack a fence for our backyard and Beau tends to get distracted by his nose and stops listening. So I was envisioning an escapade where I got more of a workout than the dogs did. We had also planned on getting the dogs in the water for their first time. I was ready for the worst!
Being a Weim, I wasn't sure how he'd react to the water. He does pretty good in the shower, and he's supposed to be a decent water dog, but at the same time we also use a spray bottle full of water to punish him and he's terrified of it. We also have to yell at him to stop drinking because he'll chug it and then puke. So the picture in my head was of him drowning while trying to drink the lake up.
The adventure took place at Raccoon River Park yesterday. We decided to get the water fun out of the way first and found a tiny little beach area and interrupted some gentlemen fishing nearby (whoops). Both dogs approached it curious, but my sister and I ended up having to shove both of them in. Luckily Trixie is a little dog, so we put her in a life jacket and pretty much threw her in. She swam! Swam... back to the beach. Immediately. She was pissed and didn't want to be wet. Beau would only go in as far as I would. So I rolled up my pants and went in to about my knees, which took Beau up to about his chest. He didn't like it either and kept leaning on me and stepping on me. I almost lost my sandals a couple times, but at least he didn't knock me over. We tried to play with some toys in the water, but my smart dog just pawed at them and pushed them under water. He wouldn't even grab a tennis ball because he didn't want to get his face wet! And when he did move he would stomp really awkward and splash all over the place. The water wasn't really the kind of water that I even wanted to be in, so I didn't get him to swim :( Beau and Trixie were both more than excited to get away from the water.
We figured it was smart to do the water thing first so they had time to dry off before getting back in my car. Again, I was picturing Beau sprinting off like a Gazelle and air drying in 2 seconds. Wrong. Beau is not a mean dog. Anyone that knows him knows that he is such a wuss. But other people see a 90 lb dog and get nervous, understandably. Its a dog park... so of course there are dogs off leash. One runs up to the fence immediately and Beau about rips my arm off to go see it. I always find myself trying to convince people that hes harmless, but my special boy looks like a rabid wolf because hes drooling so bad and tugging on me because hes so excited (it doesn't help that I'm not really that strong). When the owner finally took the dog out we went in to find the park completely empty! I was so excited and immediately took his leash off. Again... not what I expected at all. Well, I expected him to not listen to me, which was true. But he spent the whole time with his nose to the ground! I even took off running myself to get him to move and he didn't even notice. Trixie was the same way. Neither were interested in the toys or us. So we leashed them up and walked them around the rest of the dog park. Suprisingly he got tuckered out and slept well for the rest of the night :) I'd say it was a good first visit!
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