Herbie Swims (and other videos)

Yesterday Mike, Bryce, Herbie, and I went to Round Valley to beat the 120 degree heat and go swimming. We brought Herbie's new life jacket. Before that I thought doggy life jackets were silly. After all, dogs can swim. Unless you're on a boat, you shouldn't need one.

And then I met Herbie.

Herbie can swim, but not very well. She's so dense because of her muscle mass that she has to spend all her energy staying afloat. Because she has the attention span of a goldfish, she forgets to paddle and sinks, which is just plain pathetic. When she resurfaces, she's so busy trying to shake the water from her ears that she just sinks again. The saddest part is that she wants to be with us so badly that she keeps trying and trying.

I think Herbie was getting scared about swimming. When we went in the water yesterday, she sat on shore and looked worried. I picked her up by her convenient handle and plopped her in the reservoir. After the initial moment of panic, her eyes lit up and she was totally into it.

After that, we had a hard time getting her OUT of the water. Herbie has turned into quite the water dog.Now that she doesn't have to worry about staying afloat, she thinks it's the best game ever. Her favorite thing is trying to find people when they dive under water, trying to guess where they'll resurface. She was in the water for hours.

We've got a regular old water dog.

Have a random smattering of videos from the last couple weeks.

Herbie mauling Mike. He's her boyfriend.


We've been teaching her 'wait'. When we give her human food, we put it down and make her wait til we say 'ok'. Now we're transferring that to things like going outside or running up to new people, etc. Here I was making her wait to fetch her toy. You can also hear her 'talking back', which she does when we make her do something hard.


Just a goofy video. Getting Herbie riled up by snoring at her.

Herbie likes to pretend she can't jump. When I make her get in the car, she puts her front feet in and stares over her shoulder at me with these pathetic eyes like, "I can't. It's too high," but she's leap right into Mike's truck. I got tired of having to lift her into bed, so I took advantage of her being wound up to teach her, "Go to bed." Now when we get ready for sleep every night, I shout, "Herbie, go to bed!" and she gets a running start across the house and leaps into bed. It cracks me up.


Another goofy command. "Murder" when we want her to lick faces.




First swim with the life jacket.


Dive under the dog, new favorite game.


It looks like I clubbed Bryce over the head with the rock.