Scamp swim videos

Scamp is the first dog I’ve owned who is willing to swim.  Indeed, she actually seems to like it. Last August or so, she learned to fetch sticks tossed into the river.  We were aided and abetted by a small group of dogs and their people who go down to the park for the purpose of doing just that. I’ve now collected several videos of Scamp swimming to get sticks, and decided that I’m just going to post them all rather than embed them in the chronological story of my life, such as it is.

Getting video of her getting a stick I’ve tossed into the water is not as easy as it sounds.  I have to remember beforehand that I want some video, so that the phone is out and the camera is on and ready to go.  Then I have to juggle tossing in the stick and remembering to point the camera and start the video recording.  So my first attempts were somewhat lame.

So I elicited the help of a friend to handle the video while I handled the stick.

And later got some on my own. In this one, she had lost track of a stick, which had drifted away. She came in, then (I think) went back out after it.

Maybe you can tell I got a bit worried that she’d just keep going out to where the current was faster and get herself into trouble.

Here’s a video I got the same day as the above. Not of Scamp, but happened on a scene of all these Goldies swimming together. I watched entranced for some time, so didn’t get the best video, but here’s what I have.

So when I went out for my September trip, I wanted to see how Scamp would do with the swim/fetch thing on her own, without the other dogs around to model and encourage her.And it went very well. I didn’t get video everywhere–just as well–but here’s a bunch.

First, from a beautiful spot in Hell’s Canyon, where I camped on my birthday. There was a beautiful little mountain lake maybe a hundred yards from my campsite where these were taken.

 

This last one is a bit longer. I had tossed in a bigger stick, and she didn’t see where it went at first. She persisted until she finally found it, where the video begins.

These next two are from a wonderful spot above Stanley. There’s a beautiful creek–that looked a lot like a river to me, westerners are inconsistent about what they call creeks/rivers–that runs past the campground. It was quite swift, and I was curious but cautious about how she’d handle the current, and was concentrating on that, so didn’t get much video.

As you can see, she did get out into some fairly significant current and handled it well.

From there we didn’t get into water much Until we headed home. I had opted to skip Oxbow, which is on the Snake river where it forms part of the border between Idaho and Oregon, on the way out because of heat, so decided to check it out on the way home. The river is really FAST below the dam, so didn’t expect to get her into the water there, but she found a stick near a nice calm spot and practically insisted I throw it in for her, so I did. Several times. Did not video them all :-).

There’s mostly desert from there to the Cascades. The following is at La Pine state park, on the Deschutes river.

And finally, back home again. It’s been a bit chilly, but there’ve been a few days when it wasn’t too cold for swimming. If you’re Scamp, anyway. Though she has developed a tendency to run away with the sticks instead of bringing them to me, so maybe it’s time to stop for the winter. Here she and I were on our own–the other dag people haven’t been coming down for swimming.

So that’s probably way too much of the same kind of stuff, but I like them, so there they are. One of the things that charms me about watching her swim is seeing those little white paws working away under the water. Another is watching her develop techniques for dealing with different little situations. As long as she does her excited little yips when I throw a stick into water, and chases and fetches it, we’ll keep doing it. And sometimes I’ll do videos. Even though you’d think these would be enough.