So Frenchies can  swim

Water is a fact of life here on the lake. We’re surrounded by it, and we can’t get home without crossing it. We were fearful about that when we first got Maya because she’s a stout little thing, and is quite muscular. Muscle doesn’t float very well and we weren’t sure how she’d do in the water.

One day late last summer when Maya was still quite young, she accompanied me down to the boathouse to collect our mail, which is delivered thrice weekly by boat to a mailbox on our dock (oh the wonders of the US Postal Service). On the way, I stopped to check our crayfish trap – I had heard that the crayfish in the lake can be quite large but to this day have not seen one or caught one. As I was fiddling with it, I heard a large splash…and Maya was gone! She must have slipped on the dock edge. Once in the water, she sank like a stone, and since her dark color matches the lake depths, she was utterly invisible. I jumped up, with my heart leaping out of my chest, and was about to jump in the lake after her, when she popped up in roughly the same spot she had fallen in, paddling frantically and looking properly freaked out. I lay on my chest on the dock and called to her, and she swam/splashed awkwardly towards me, managing to keep herself afloat but not making great progress. When she got close enough, I was able to grab her and haul her up on the dock. She promptly skedaddled up to the house. Here’s a picture of her shortly afterwards, sitting on a tuffet normally reserved for our cat Luna:

She had never been up on that tuffet before, nor has she been since. We usually consider that spot a safe place to put food so she can’t get into it. As I said, she was kind of freaked about the experience.

She’s actually rebounded quite well. She still accompanies us down to the boathouse to get mail, but she takes the inside track, right up against the boathouse wall. All in all, although we were sorry about the trauma and would have preferred to introduce her to the water more gently, at least we know now that she can indeed swim and that she has a healthy respect for the water. When we go swimming this coming summer, I’m curious if she’ll want to join us…somehow I doubt it!

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