I had intended to give Boom Daddy's visit to Hensley Lake the full treatment but indeed, much has gone on since, so you will just have to fill in the gaps in the narrative with broad assumptions about our general glee. Pretty easy if you ask me...
There aren't many State Parks that allow dogs off-leash, so we need to find either municipal, county, or national parks that do. Unfortunately, they aren't all that common. In this case, we needed to head out to the awesome foothills of the Sierra to a man made lake created by a (nasty) dam put up by the Army Corps of Engineers.
I am not sure why those who fish also need to be such pigs, but I am sad to say, large swaths of the lake's perimeter were so strewn with nasty trash, we really had to limit where we went.
Originally we went to one of the more out of the way (and outside the pay area, which likely explains it) lagoons, but there were so much broken glass and so many discarded fish hooks everywhere, it was WAY too dangerous for us to be tramping around.
While dogs are allowed here at the park, they aren't allowed at the human beach itself, which is tough, because that was pretty much the only clean & safe shoreline there was for the kid & I. Bummer. With a little effort and driving around, we found a few spots to hang out in.
The day itself wasn't super hot, but if you have black fur and can't sweat, I suppose it was plenty hot. The kid usually runs away from the shore after a quick sniff, but today, I sensed we might have our first dip into the water, even if only to cool down. I was in luck - sorta.
After walking around and sniffing everything but the area that got wet from the waves, he came close, and I decided that with a little "help" he might go in and enjoy himself. Being a brute, I have tried pushing the kid into the water before when he clearly wasn't interested. I really really did decide I wouldn't do it anymore since I was sufficiently convinced he just didn't like the water; yet, seeing how hot he was (and knowing he needed to either cool down or we would have to leave, and I was having a gay old time), I decided one more try. That was the trick! For the first time, the kid actually stayed in the water! He seemed to get it: "if I go in the water when I am hot, I will be less hot".
He didn't stay in long enough for me to grab the camera. He didn't swim or anything, just sorta stood there and lowered himself a little to get more agua on him. He also stopped panting. Good times! We ended up hanging out for almost a full hour before the "I'm Bored. Let's go sleep in the car!"-look came over him. That is no small feat y'all!
On our way home, we hit a few new-to-us doggie parks in our guide book. After sodomizing a few chihuahuas and brushing off a few suitors of the same stripe, we called it a weekend. All in all, between Panoche Hills, Lake Hensley, and the doggie parks we hit, it was tip-top. Given the dearth of dog-friendly places in the southern Central Valley, it was no small feat for us to find a few spots for a man and his chi to hang out in good fun. If I get a dog willing to swim on hot days out of the deal too, then the weekend was nothing short of epic!
Posted by rudayday at June 08, 2009 12:27 AM