Zoe tries to Swim Away

Zoe and I took a swim yesterday. I'd rigged a rope ladder off the stern, but hadn't tried it out yet -- what could go wrong, right? After our first swim a couple years ago (I think wrote about it earlier) I made sure she had her life jacket on, then lowered her into the water.

As soon as I let go, she took off like a rocket. With the life jacket holding her up, she was able to use her paws for propulsion only, and boy was she fast. By the time I got in, she had about a 10 yard lead. I was able catch her pretty quickly, but she wanted to keep going. It was all I could to get her back to the boat. I basically had to carry her and tread water back, otherwise she'd take off again.

Now, I'm a good swimmer, and even trained as a life guard when I was in high school, but no one ever trained me how to save a dog, especially a strong one who doesn't want to be saved. Anyway, I got her back to the boat after a few minutes and figured we'd had enough excitement for the day.

But now I was faced with the problem of how to get back on the boat. If I let her go to climb on board, she'd swim away, but with the deck almost three feet above us, I couldn't just lift her on deck either. So, I held her in one arm and hung into the rope ladder with the other and tried to figure out how I could be so stupid.

There were lots of boats anchored around us, so I knew I could always call for help, or even swim over, but I didn't want ask unless absolutely necessary. I tried to climb up with one arm, but since the ladder was over the stern, my feet would go up under the boat and make it more difficult. However, I was able to climb up high enough to grab the stern pulpit with my left hand, but couldn't quite hoist Zoe on deck with my right. Had she been a sack of potatoes, I guess I could have slung her up there, but I'm not doing that with Zoe.

So, we sank back down to gather strength for the next try. Since she had on a life jacket, the one thing I did right (July 16th isn't a good day for me), the only real problem was her swimming away.

I finally decided that I could get on board even without the ladder if necessary, so I untied the last couple of loops in the ladder and used the end of the line to tether her (oh, and from now on, she never goes in without a life jacket AND a tether).

The next higher loop was at water level, but by using both arms and pulling myself up by the toe rail, I was able to get my foot in it and climbed right on board. She was still trying to swim away when I hoisted her up and onto the deck.

I'm not sure if she was scared or just really wanted to get to shore -- she's still resisting going on board -- but she didn't want to stay with the boat no matter what. We'll try another swim soon, but needless to say, it won't be today, I'm still recovering.