Hello everyone! 👋
I hope everyone has been well during the time we’ve disappeared. Quite a bit has happened recently and hopefully we’ll be able give all the updates soon.
Rewinding back to last month while my memory is still clear, we enrolled our furbaby Taro into swim school. Oh yes, we’ve received the many 🤨 looks when we told the people around us. Someone also asked if we would like the contact details of a piano teacher for our dog too 🙄.
Don’t dogs know how to swim by nature? The answer is yes and no. It really depends on the breed and all but learning to swim wasn’t the main reason for us. Taro is a moodle and it’s very common that the may inherit a knee/joint problem called luxating patella. So it is like a knee dislocation problem. Before Taro turned 6 months old, the VET had advised us that there’s a chance of Taro having a weak knee and getting luxating patella and the only way to correct this if it becomes a problem is surgery. Of course he was still a puppy at the time and things could change. Doing all we can to help him strengthen up before the next VET visit, we gave him calcium, gave him food toppers and enrolled him into swim school which all helps with strengthening.
Another reason was to also have him gain confidence with water. He’s not very keen on baths and would look a little scared every time we put him in the bath... the water does not reach his knees just so you know.
So here we went, 6 swimming lessons which took place for 6 Saturday’s.
During the first few lessons, the dogs learnt to swim with a life jacket and support from the swimming instructors. One owner/ parent of the dog is allowed in the water to learn how to support and guide their dogs in the water.
Each lesson we saw Taro getting better and better with the water and he was keeping up very well with the bigger dogs in his class. Taro was the smallest breed there however he was not the slowest swimmer!
Each lesson, the swim coach would tell the class that she’s run out of things to teach that lesson as this class seemed more advanced and had so many talented swimmers.
Taro of course tries his best and the swimming does get him pretty tired by the end of the lesson. It sometimes takes two whole days for him to recover as he’s experienced a little bit of muscle pain from the exercise too.
The final lesson came and all the dogs were able to swim without a life jacket and any support from their owners or the swim instructors. Everyone was able to graduate and received a certificate as well.
Wanting to be prepared for beach days as summer is nearing, we bought Taro a life jacket just incase he would need it while in the water with us. We don’t know if we will end up somewhere with a bit of waves or not and there might be moments that we may take our eyes off him and he’ll get up to no good.
We worried for nothing. Took Taro to the beach and he loved it! He was able to run in and out of the water himself without any fear! We brought his life jacket in case and had thoughts of putting it on when he gets tired but still wants to be in the water however he was pretty responsible and gave himself a timeout on the sand each time he got tired.
Outcome of the luxating patella issue? Well during the last visit, the VET said that she couldn’t find any problems at this stage and to continue to monitor for any future changes. That’s good news! 😊😊