Safety First

Despite of his age, Biscuit is still very fit and active. It seems easy for him to keep up with the much younger collies. Because of this, I sometimes forget that he is an old man. Last year I noticed that he was struggling when we were at the lake for a long time. He sometimes seemed to run out of energy, so I bought him a life jacket to help him and make swimming easier. I sort of forgot about it this year though.

Yesterday I had a scare. The boys had been swimming for a while. Hero and Gollum are faster than Biscuit (mostly because they are bigger) and I was looking at them and took my eyes off Biscuit for a few seconds. 

When I looked back at Biscuit, it seemed that he didn't come closer to the shore even though he was swimming the best he could. I realized that he was in trouble and ran out in the water to help him (good thing it was so hot as my clothes got wet). When he saw me come, he sort of gave up and he suddenly sank quickly. I got hold of him and got him back on the shore. I think he just got too tired and couldn't swim anymore. 

His legs are shorter than the collies', so he starts swimming before they do and he doesn't always make it back on dry land before he turns around and follows the collies back out again. He needs to swim more than they do to keep up with them and he is a lot older than they are too. 

So today I got the life jacket out again and Biscuit loved it. It makes it so easy for him to float and he uses a lot less energy. When the collies were tired, he was still going strong :-)

There is a small video of him here. 

I promise Biscuit, I will never forget it again!

See you tomorrow
Emmy and the Hazyland Boys