Füstös or NO to swimming

Füstös or NO to swimming
2011.07.13.

s the vet had suggested as part of some kind of hydrotherapy we put Füstös in the car yesterday after work and went to a mine-lake nearby for swimming. Even the start was a bit difficult because at the end of the day Meggyes had already put Füstös back to his place as usual. He has a kennel reserved for him in the hospital. He had his bedtime story and that meant the end of the day for Füstös, he was about to sleep.
So he was pretty confused and let me know on a loud voice that I should have left him alone and that he was not going anywhere. Somehow we made it to the car, we put a harness on him and left.
From then until we arrived back to the Shelter he didn't make a noise, not even a word and that is a huge surprise from a mouthy dog like him who has a bark for everything.

This behaviour didn’t disappear when we arrived to the Lake, especially after he saw the blue water. Frankly, he put on the brake. He wasn’t willing to move and than he wanted to run away.
But we were so close to our goal no one could have stopped us: Füstös is going to swim, there is no other way!

We put him in the water. You should have seen his face: he was looking at us with huge round eyes it was like he wanted to say: OK, it has been funny and everything but do you really want this? Seriously? !??!?!
Well, the answer was YES. We were serious about this!

Although he didn’t like the situation at all (the water was soft, pleasantly warm, the beach was sandy so everything was just perfect for an evening swimming) it turned out very quickly that he is actually a good swimmer.

His trainer, Zoli swam with him, and let him swim back. Füstös did it, he was swimming in the water using his four legs. He didn’t go under the water, that was a rhytmic swim but his goal was obviously the land, the escape. We repeated this action several times of course with breaks.
Swimming itself – during which the weight doesn’t scale on the legs – developes muscles and that is indispensable for Füstös because his leg muscles are pretty atrophied.

His relief was obvious when the swimming session was over and we started packing.
The only thing he didn’t know was that his trial was not over at all.

After arriving home is legs needed to be rebandaged. His ’maces’ happened to look funny thanks to my inexperience and to my little helper but Füstös didn’t mind.

He took the difficulty of rebandaging with unbelievable patience and calmness, however probably he got used to it because it happenes on every day or every other day and normally this procedure is followed by enthusiastic licking from him.

You can find more pictures of this adventure HERE!

Although Füstös doesn’t like swimming, it is very good for him so we are taking him to other swimming sessions in the future. It should happen more often so we would like to ask everybody who goes for a swim with his/her dog during the day - during the Noah Shelter’s opening hours – please think of Füstös and if there’s enough place for him in the team/car, call Kinga on 06 70 383 9480.

We are aware that it is very difficult to find a place where owner and dog can swim together without being harassed or find etc. Swimming is not allowed in the mine-lake but we we felt that we broke the law for a good cause.

Please if any of you know a place, mine-lake, private-lake where the volunteer workers and dogs of Noah’s would be welcome, let us know on info@noeallatotthon.hu because this problem, especially during the summer keeps coming back.
Thank you!