Water

When I went upstairs a bit ago to get a shower, I suggested to Scrappy he save his legs and stay downstairs.  "Tell Mommy a story," I said.  "Tell her about the time you fell in the river.  Either one."


A lot of Scrappy's time with us has revolved around water.  Shortly after Scrappy joined our household, he made apparent one of the two big differences between himself and our dear departed Fred.  The one we learned later was that where Fred was shy of cameras, Scrappy was and is photogenic.  The first, though, we learned on out first walk down to the creek at Meadowbrook.  Where Fred went out of his way to avoid water, be it a river or a puddle, Scrappy waded right into the creek, and began a long love affair with running water.

One of our first water based discoveries was The Spot- a hidden little beach on Stony Run Creek.

It was our "You have to know where to look" hiding place, and over the years it has changed as much as we have.   It is one of the handful of places neither one of us are real adept at getting to.  The biggest one of those we dubbed the End of the World.

This is the point of land that juts between a inlet from the river and the Stony Run "delta".  It is surrounded by marsh, and you have to wait until they close the dam upstream before it's passable enough to get to the high backbone.  And there on, it's thick brush with no trail to get to a point where you can overlook the river.  We made this journey exactly once, to see if it could be done.

Move about a millimeter left of the copyright symbol, and that's where we were.


Back when Laurie was hanging with this one friend of hers, we used to walk in the rivers for fun.  Scrappy came with us one time (I believe it might have been at Metea, thus we were in violation of the law), and Scrappy learned that a) he liked swimming, b) he didn't much care for the current, but it was okay, until c) he had to swim IN the current, and then it wasn't so fun.  One of the three times water made him come close to panic.  Don't worry, I got him to a rock and he was back to adventure in no time.

Now, the two falls in the river- which I just killed an hour or so looking for pictures of that apparently do not exist- were both lapses of judgment on his part.  One was in the woods along the river, in the fall, and he thought a floating raft of leaves was solid ground.  I quickly sprung into action.  First, I threw myself down on the ground on top of his leash so it wouldn't move while I took a picture of the incident. (In the meantime, he's clinging to the bank with his front paws, and with the way the bank was worn below the water line, he had no place to brace his back legs.)  Then, I crawled over and got ahold of his collar and drug him back up.  He was soaked and not impressed; I was calling Laurie, saying, "Guess what your dog did now?", and laughing my butt off.


The other was shortly after we moved here, and sometime after the "swimming in the current" ordeal.  It was just spring, the IPFW footbridge was just completed, and the stone workbridge they used was still there, halfway out into the river.  Scrappy didn't stop to think it might be deep in the middle of the river, and soon found himself wondering why there was no bottom.


I sure wish I could have found those pictures.  Those were little bits of heaven when we could do anything and not really get hurt.  Now water is top on his list for another reason.  And the legs that once could swim in current now swivel across the hardwood as if he's a marionette on very loose strings.  Right now, I just thank God for whatever time we have.  And he does, too.  He still has to sleep with me, even if he can barely get up the stairs, much less onto the bed.  And walks are only really enjoyable when there isn't some form of damnable precipitation on the ground.


I remember another time, We got caught in a SEVERE thunderstorm, about a quarter-mile or so from shelter.  We ran full speed for the fence row between the Plex (where we were) and the apartments.  Well, I TRIED to run full speed, what with pouring rain, lightning, 40 MPH winds, etc.  Scrappy would run 40-50 feet and STOP to sniff something.  By the time we made the fence row, the wind was coming in enough different directions that no place was safe.  So we caught our breath and just walked on home.

The aftermath

Sometimes I feel like we spent our prime together, and now our prime is over.  Sometimes I don't think heaven will be much of a heaven without me, Scrappy, a woods, a river... and maybe a pocket full of BabyBels.