A Tail of a Chow Chow Named Teddy

Teddy is about to celebrate her 6th birthday. For almost every single day of her life she has gone to her favorite park for a couple hours each morning. Teddy is steadfast when it comes to her routine. If I am off by a few minutes for anything, she lets me know it. This is why I was very alarmed recently when she refused to go to the park. For a day or two I was not too concerned but I still found it curious. By the end of the first week, I was fearing the worst. I tried bribing her with treats, but even that failed.

If you've followed my blog for sometime, you know that Teddy is extremely quirky when it comes to water. On one hand, she has never seen a lake she doesn't love.

Yet she hates walking on snow.

And she blames the snow on me.

A lot of her winter was spent doing this.

And doing the blame look.

But occasionally she braved it and wore it too.

She has never met a beach she hasn't loved.

But she gets out of the way quickly if that moving water comes too close.

She has no trouble sticking those big paws in our ponds to get drinks.

Yet she walks on the melted spots to avoid the snow.

She will stand and stare at the pool but has never tried to go in.

But show her a new lake and she charges in.

As far as the leash lets her go.

And leaves very reluctantly.

Very reluctantly.

During this park standoff, Teddy would stand at the bottom of the steps which lead to the driveway and bark at me on and off all day. I knew she was trying to tell me something but I just couldn't figure out what she was saying.

So, after racking my brain for almost 2 weeks, I finally figured it out. We have a suburban and the entire back part of the car is Teddy's mobile kennel. She is very protective of her area. My husband is the one that takes her to the park each morning. Let me just say this, he is not the most observant person I know. I hardly ever drive that car and rarely ever look in the back of it. When we first got Teddy, we bought a cooling mat for her to keep her cool when she is in the car. It works like a thin waterbed. Recently, my husband has been hauling a dozens of bags of very heavy mulch in the back of the car. Two days ago I awoke to an AH HA moment. I ran downstairs and out to the driveway and opened the back of the car. Sure enough, the cooling mat had leaked from the weight of the mulch and Teddy's entire area was saturated like a wet sponge. The first ting I did was kill my husband. Then I soaked up all of the water. I put down clean dry towels and a clean blanket and bingo! Teddy got right in the car and went to the park. My husband said when she saw the park she cried a little bit. She is once again a happy pup!

Just one more bit of insight into this little story. The day before she stopped getting in the car, my husband had driven her to the vet which is a 3 hour round trip. That poor puppy sat in all of that water for the entire trip. End of story......you must excuse me now while I go and kill my husband a second time.