Boomer

The first time I took Boomer on a run with Madine was a little rough. Madine trotted right along either side of me holding her head high and looking up at me to confirm any commands I might give her. Boomer, however, was so excited about running that he was constantly jumping up and down on Madine’s back or running around her and getting their leashes all tangled up. One day Boomer almost snatched my arm out of socket when

he saw a squirrel dash across the street in front us. He was not used to being on the leash and he pulled so hard that my arm and shoulder ached for days. Another day he got so excited by one of the squirrels that he tripped me up with the rope leash and caused me to fall down and scrape all of the meat off of my knees and hands as I crashed onto the asphalt. I was so mad at Boomer I could have cried. Once again, I called him over to me and made him sit.

I grabbed him by the nose again with both of my bleeding hands and said to him, “Boomer if you keep this up and you cause me any more injuries, I am going to give your butt away. Do you understand me?”

He lowered his head and licked my bleeding knees. Then he looked up at me as if to say, “I am really sorry Daddy, I didn’t mean to. I just get so excited about them squirrels that I can’t control myself. I promise I’ll try to do better.”

I felt that Boomer and I were starting to connect because he would mimic Madine when I’d give her a command. Boomer watched Madine do the commands and he did likewise without being told. In a matter of weeks, Boomer had caught on to all of the hand and arm signals we had trained Madine to do. As a matter of fact the one command that we could get Boomer to do very easy was, “Get in the pool.”  It was kind of funny because when we called Boomer into the pool, Madine took off and tried to hide under the lounge chairs or patio furniture we had scattered around the pool deck. Madine hated the water!

After one run with Boomer and Madine, I got into the pool to cool off.  Boomer waded right into the pool with me while Madine took off to find a place to hide and cool down. As I sat on the steps in the pool cooling down, I threw a racquet ball to the opposite end of the pool and Boomer swam after it. Once he had it in his mouth he swam back to me and handed me the ball. Then he stood in the water, chest deep, waiting for me to throw it again to the far end of the pool. This became our ritual after nearly every run.

Sometimes I held the ball under the water a few feet or so and told Boomer to get the ball.  He dove under water to get it.  It was amazing to watch him. I finally bought him some heavy weighted rubber rings and I would toss them to the bottom of the four-foot deep area. Boomer dove down to get them without any trouble. If he missed grabbing it he came back up for air and went right back down after it until he grabbed it in his mouth.

It was so much fun to watch him to go after the rubber rings, using his front paws to propel himself down like a human being doing a breaststroke. He kept his eyes open so he could see the rings on the bottom of the pool. I felt sorry for him because of all of the chlorine in the pool that I thought it would burn his eyes. So one day I put my swimming goggles on him to see if he would swim with them on. He never once tried to take them off. When he dove down with the goggles on and raised his head up, he look like a deep sea cartoon character coming out of the water. He stood and coughed up water, but as soon as he caught his breathe, he barked at me as if to say, “Okay I’m ready to dive down after another rubber ring.”