Sunday, January 13, 2008

Discovering water

It's been hot here. Stifling, suck all your energy, burn your skin if you walk outside hot. So we've been playing in the water.

Tilly loves the shower and thinks the hose is pretty nifty, too, but we wanted to see how she'd do in deep water. See if she like to swim a bit. So Dave filled up our spa and MatildaLily and I took a cool plunge. It felt awesome!
She splashes a lot at first but then gets the rhythm down and does pretty well.

She likes to stand on the shallow seat and look around.

Her first foray into the deep all by her lonesome didn't go really smoothly...she forgot to move her legs!

A little bit of help from Mom and it's all good again...

Today we were going crazy being stuck inside so we decided to head down to a beach that we know is almost always deserted and is rarely visited. We've talked to our vets about taking Tilly down before she has had all of her vaccinations and so we knew we had to keep her in the water and on the water's edge to help minimize any risk there might be. Unfortunately, the breeze was up a little bit and this gave us a bit of chop right at the shore and Til' was a bit nervous about it. We carried her into the sea and let her do a little assisted swimming before letting her swim a few meters on her own.


Being on the lead for the first time, heading to the beach for the first time and swimming in the ocean for the first time was all a bit overwhelming for her so we didn't stay too long. But she did great and once she remembers to get her back end moving is a good swimmer!



Dora loves the beach and loves to swim around in circles. She really couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about...but we remember her first timid times at the beach, too! She helped supervise and played with her Dad while Mom babysat the little one.


Dora and I had already been to the beach in the morning for a nice walk with our friends Ross, Mary and Digger. On the way back home, I saw a racehorse goanna or bungarrow (pronounced bung arrah) crossing the road. Surprisingly, I actually had a camera with me as Ross had kindly cleaned my sensor overnight! I didn't think I had a card for the camera and asked if Mary had her camera (of course not!) and Ross said that I did in fact have a card in the case! Yay!! So out came the newly cleaned 40D and the 100 macro...I'm not actually game enough to get too close to these guys, so I did a very slow approach!

He watched me warily for a few minutes and then decided to go back the way he came:

He settled under a bush and allowed me to creep a bit closer...but I am still a wimp and piked out after getting this close:

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