Ruby Loved The Water

My dog, Ruby, loved the water. If I was sprinkling the lawn, she'd be right at the sprinkler head, biting at the stream of water. We had an underground sprinkler system with five heads scattered throughout the front yard. If she were biting at the water from a sprinkler head, I would walk over the the valve control and turn off the water just to see the perplexed look on her face. She'd stare at the sprinkler head for a long time before turning away. That is when I'd turn the water back on just to see her go back to it. Then I would turn it off again and turn on a sprinkler on the other side of the yard just to watch her sprint at top speed to bite at that one. Ruby would run after sprinkler heads longer than I wanted to keep turning them on and off again. She also loved boat rides because she could bite at the frothy wake at the side of the boat. We had a 12 foot fishing boat with a 7.5 HP Evinrude motor. With the throttle fully open, I could get some wake moving at the side of the boat and she would bite at that wake, snapping her jaws together and throwing her head back and forth. She would be SO excited! Without warning she would decide to bite at the wake on the other side of the boat. I'd have to be careful because a 75 pound dog throwing her weight from one side of the boat to the other was enough to tip you over if you weren't careful. And watch out if you were sitting by her because she was reckless in her water biting. If Ruby was in the boat and we were going to go fast, we took the rods and reels out first because of her recklessness. She loved boat rides but she was a handful. I never had the courage to take her for a canoe ride. If I was in the boat, she wanted to be with me. If I wanted to fish, I'd have to have someone hold her and take off away from the cabin a.s.a.p. and at full speed. If I went too slow or too close to shore, she'd follow me and sometimes swim out to the boat putting herself in danger. Sometimes we took the paddle boat out for a spin. She didn't like the plastic shell of the boat but she didn't like being left out either so she followed us. And she wasn't the only one. I remember one leisurely paddle boat trip around the point where we were surrounded by a 75 pound golden retriever (Ruby), a 110 pound golden retriever (Wedo), and a 120 pound St. Bernard (Cupid). What a sight we must have made. Good times, good times.