Dog Show washout

Daisy, Cybi and I were supposed to be going to our first dog show today, but sadly Hurricane Bertha (or the remnants thereof) put paid to that, and the event was cancelled. We went for a long walk instead in the rain instead. My plan was to go along an old railway not far from the house - the rationale being that it's quite sheltered at the start as it runs in a culvert with heavy tree cover, and hopefully the conditions would have improved a little before we got to the more exposed path.

It was a fine plan, as these things so often are, but failed utterly to take account of the fact that the sheltered area at the start in the culvert is lower than the surrounding area - that being the point of a culvert. And there was a *lot* of ground water run off, and an awful lot of rain. Consequently the early part of our walk was more like wading through a river than having a nice sheltered stroll. Daisy loved it and happily splooshed around in the water. She seems to enjoy being as deep in water as she can get without having to swim, so was playing in the bits that came up to her chest. Cybi, on the other hand, hates water with a passion. He won't even get his toes wet unless there is no other alternative, so he was not having fun. So much so that I took pity on him, and actually carried him through the worst bit. Sadly no photographic evidence of this, but the absurdity of the situation didn't escape me as I lugged the great lump up the path.

We had a nice walk after that - I'd gone all out on the waterproofing and was glad I was wearing my drizabone jacket and waterproof trousers along with the wellies. But the rain didn't stop the whole time we were out and I eventually decided that we should turn back in case the water in the culvert was still going up. Which it was, and while we weren't in any danger (at worst case we could have worked our way along one of the sides, or left the path completely and walked through one of the estates that sits adjacent to the path of the railway) we had a couple of exciting moments on the way back. Daisy underestimated the strength of the water running down into the culvert and I lost her temporarily (she rapidly reappeared, barking her head off and with no ill effects whatsoever) and poor Cybi did his best to walk through the water where there was no alternative, but eventually got to chest deep and just froze. I ended up going back for him, picking him up out of the water and carrying him back to dry land. He's not usually a nervous little dog, but I didn't see any reason to traumatise him by making him walk through the water if it was scaring him. The downside to carrying him was that our combined weight made me sink just that bit further into the sand of the path, which meant the water got above welly height. Urgh. So the tail end of our walk included me squelching and complaining about my cold feet, while the pups shook themselves enthusiastically every few steps to try not to get any more waterlogged.

Needless to say the rain stopped as soon as we arrived back at the front door, and the sun came out. But we had fun anyway...