Yep, noth’n like hang’n out at the cric’ and tak’n a dip in the old swim’n hole…
When we first got Macleod and Mya he was 10 months and she was a pup. We took Macleod a week before Mya was old enough to leave home. Thought it would be good to let him adjust a bit before we throw a puppy in there to mix it up. In that week he and I went all around our house there’s a tree line two blocks away with hills and trails and the creek. The first day we got Macleod home I took him out walking around training and bonding with him. I let him lead the way and he walked up a gravel path I thought might be a driveway. Turns out it was… but it was also a service road that leads to a small ravine with public access that has a fare sized pond where it gets piped under ground. It was warm that day and he was thirsty so I walked him over to get a drink. He lapped up a hole bunch then started walking in… “watch out its pretty deep there”, I said. Right then his feet left the ground and started swimming around I had his flex lead still on so he paddled out till I had to walk out in the water a bit. Didn’t want to spoil his fun. He swam around for a few minutes, got out a shook off then went right back in… a couple of times. We had our selves a water lov’n Mal. We figured an arctic breed would tend to shy away from the icy water. Not Macleod, ever since that day he’s had a fascination with water, playing in it anyway. Can’t remember how many lawn sprinklers he destroyed. Every where we went he would head for the water. love’s it, the world changed for him when we took them both to the ocean for the first time, look at all this water… the taste was sure a surprise. He bounded around in the water doing belly flops smiling his face off. Mya would only get her feet wet and give him a wwwooowooowooo for being such a fool. One day I came across an old bathtub from a renovation I worked on, it was a normal tub but it was only 3 feet long. The inner hoarder in me said not to take it to the dump right away. One day we noticed Macleod trying to get into a small pool we had set up to cool off in the summer and I remembered the mini tub. I dragged it out, gave it a rinse and before I was done he was in it with all 4 feet splashing around. He would dig into the water so fast It turned up and splashed and bubbled. “The Hot Tub” was born… We mounted it on the house next to the hose bib so it could be filled at a moments notice. That was nine years ago, its a little weathered but he still goes in in it daily. Even after that many years Mya would only get her front feet wet.
almost a week ago now we had ran out of the Artemisinin herb we had been giving Macleod and had to re order with only a few days supply left. After only one day we could see he was starting to favour his front lag a little, and it got worse each day. For 2 days now he has not been putting weight on it when he is sitting and has gotten a lot more restless. I couldn’t think that this one herb is fighting a war on its own but it appears to have a vital roll. The tracking # shows that its in Canada on Friday and being processed as of Monday morning, I can drive there in 45 min. so we hope it shows up Tuesday.
We had always seemed to drive some where else to go for walks and hadn’t gone back to the swim’n hole for a long time. He was sure excited when we went back there a few weeks ago. I think he may even prefer it over ice cream. Hopefully the meds get here soon and they bring the fight back to Big Rig. He’s been so excited and lively so its that much harder to see him hurting now.
