This morning, Mom bundled me into the back seat of her car and we drove...somewhere. Mom was mumbling something about Baylands and Bair Island and Movie Theater as we drove, but when we arrived, I saw no bears or movie theaters. (What's a movie theater?) I saw mud and water and more mud and vegetation. It smelled salty and wet and swampy. And then I saw FOUR Leonbergers! They were bigger than me! They were handsome almost as me! They were really really big!
We all sniffed politely and went romping off with our humans and Mom took off my leash. Wow!!! Off leash! "Zoe will be so jealous," I thought. The Leos said, "Let's run!" And they did. And I did. Not together, mind you, but I was sort of the new kid on the block and they are BIG and I didn't want to get body slammed into the mud. Ick. So I ran and they ran and we all ran. Then we pooped. And we ran some more. And the mud leaped and danced and coated the Leos and missed me completely except for the very bottoms of my feet.
We came down a small rise and there was water spread out across the swampy places. And mud. Boy, do my new friends ever like mud. And water. Do they ever like water. They waded in and paddled and waded and got out and shook and got in and got muddy. Mom asked if I wanted to go swimming. "What," I thought, "Are you nuts? Me? Muddy?" Sheesh.
While the Leos were swimming, I was running. For the life of me I don't know what happened, but I suddenly took off at a gallop right toward the water. Actually, I thought it was a gray parking lot. It didn't move like water. It was gray like my driveway. I expected it to be hard like my driveway. So I leaped off a small embankment, and in mid-flight, I began to have second thoughts. "Oh-oh," I said to myself, �What have I done? This doesn't look like a parking lot."
SPLASH!!!!!!! Oh my. Oh my oh my oh my. Cold. Salty. WET. And I was swimming! Swimming to shore, to be sure, but swimming nonetheless. I clambered out on the mud flat and shook off. My feet were black. My belly was black. My ruff somehow stayed white. Mom says it probably floated and the leaping mud missed. But the mud did a good job of jumping on every other part of me. I was a little startled and a little embarrassed, so I just kept running pretending that I wasn't wet and muddy.
And then the best thing happened. The other Leos realized that although I was a collie on the outside (by now, just barely) I was a Leonberger on the inside, and they started chasing me and barking and playing with me like a Leo! That was best of all!
I think I kind of slimed up the back seat of our car, but Mom says there are few things in this world that can't be washed, and her car isn't one of them. Neither, she said, am I. So on the way home, Mom took me to the Do-It-Yourself dogwash and she remarked that she didn't end up as wet as she does when she takes Zoe. Unlike my sister, I know how to behave in the bath. But we really slimed up the bath tub - you should have seen the mud climbing up the sides trying to avoid going down the drain. Mom says not to worry, that the mud will just end up at the Bay where it started out. I hope so. The Leos would be so disappointed if the all that stinky mud were gone next time they go to the Baylands.
I can hardly wait to tell Zoe about the running and the Leos and the running and the mud and the dog wash and the running. She will be SO jealous; being a Siberian, she lives to run. I, on the other hand, being naturally gregarious and fastidious, live to...to...to MUD and WET and RUN!!!
Sailor the collie-berger, friend of Audubon, Basie, Donner, Elsa and maybe someone else but who can remember? I think I'll go and make sure my feet are white now. Then I will be a rug. A damp rug.
