Two Kids, A Dog & A Rowboat

Good afternoon.

This week's edition of the newsletter is going out a little early, as we're leaving this afternoon for a family reunion in Nebraska. We're especially excited to spend a day floating down the Niobrara river... the kids on tubes, and the adults in a modified "water tank" loaded with a cooler & supplies for a picnic lunch.

When we started planning this trip, I checked out a number of websites for various canoe/raft/tube outfitters in Valentine, Nebraska. The water tank option looked like fun, and I noticed that in one photo there was a dog in the water tank. (Click here to see what I mean).

"Perfect," I thought... "We can take Sox!"

"Not so fast," said Wesley. "He's never even been in a boat before."

Not easily deterred, I asked an outdoors-man friend his opinion. He advised me to do a trial run on Mirror Lake before we hauled the dog all the way to Nebraska, only to find out Sox hated the idea.

With a lot of persuasion, I talked Wesley into our "trial run". Tuesday night, we borrowed my friend's rowboat, and headed to the little man-made lake on the south edge of town. Mirror Lake is perfect to walk or jog around, and a great location for for picnics & parties. Fishermen occasionally fish from shores. Rarely, do you see anyone boating there.

We carried the rowboat to the dock, loaded up Matthew & our niece Justina, and lifted Sox into the boat. He trembled at first, but seemed okay as we floated away from shore. Wesley & Justina rowed to the middle of the lake, then we returned to shore with no problem. I will admit that as we got closer to shore, Sox looked like he wanted to bail out and swim.

We rested, and Sox and I climbed out of the boat to get the camera. When we returned to the boat, I told him to "LOAD UP!", and he jumped right into the boat! I quickly snapped these pictures of Sox, Matthew, Justina & Wesley, and we headed for home.

Success.. He passed the trial run! Wesley relented, and agreed that he can come with us to Nebraska. I'm pretty sure that he'll do just fine in the water tank, and I'll try to get some great pictures for next week's newsletter.

In the meantime, Laurie-Ann will "hold down the fort" at home, house-sitting & looking after our other four-legged friends.