The buckles on Hank's life jacket make a particular double click, and he can hear it from two rooms away. By the time I've snapped the second strap he's at the back door grumbling, which is his way of saying we are already late.
Swimming was always part of the plan for Hank's comeback. During rehab last winter he did six sessions on an underwater treadmill, walking in warm water up to his chest. When his surgeon cleared him for off-leash play in mid-May, the next step after the fenced yard was real swimming, added slowly, as a way to rebuild the muscle in his back legs without the pounding of running. That was the plan for Hank's knee. If your own dog is coming back from surgery, the people who've seen that knee are the ones to write the water plan.
So we've been building up all summer, and by the end of July we'd worked up to the kind of lake days he lives for. August is for those.
Our rules for the water
- The life jacket goes on every time, even in the river shallows. It's the $45 one we bought in May of last year for boat practice. The handle on the back lets me help him up a bank without grabbing a leg.
- Walk in, walk out. No leaping off docks, no launching off the bank, no scrambling up steep edges. We pick spots with a sandy, gradual entry.
- Ten-minute sets, then out for shade and a drink from the squeeze bottle. Three sets, tops.
- Throws stay short and low, parallel to shore, about five per set. The ball launcher stays in the car.
- He drinks our water, not the lake's.
- Rinse, towel, ears dried. He's had ear trouble in past summers, and a damp ear canal in August is asking for another round.
Where we swim
Most weeknights it's the sandy bend on the Rum River in town, which runs low and slow by August. It's barely swimming there, more like wading with ambition, which is plenty for a Tuesday. On weekends we drive to a quiet lake access a few miles out of town, where the shore is sandy, nobody minds a dog at seven in the morning and the water gets deep enough five steps out that he really swims.
Before any lake swim this time of year, I look at the water first. Last August I wrote about the blue-green algae warnings that show up late in the summer, and it's already the season to check. If the water looks like pea soup, has a scum on top or streaks like spilled paint, we turn around. The river bend is our backup for those days.
No boat rides this year. Climbing in and out of Ron's 16-foot fishing boat is exactly the kind of move we're avoiding on that knee, and Caleb has been very decent about fishing alone.
The day we overdid it
The last Sunday in July we took a picnic up to Mille Lacs. The water was perfect, Hank was perfect, and Caleb and I got to talking and stopped counting sets. I'd guess he swam the better part of an hour, in and out, bringing the same stick back over and over. He was thrilled. Monday morning he was slow getting off his bed and a little stiff in the back end, in a way we hadn't seen since spring.
It passed. Two quiet days with short leash walks only, and by Wednesday he was back to his normal self. But it rattled me enough that I set a timer on my phone now, and every big lake day is planned as a two-day event: the swim, then the easy day after. His right knee has never given him trouble, and everyone who has looked at his legs this year, me included, knows that's the knee we'd like to keep out of the story.
Hank's take: ten minutes is not a swim. It's a warm-up.
