River Rescue!!

What an afternoon! My neighbours have gone away for a couple days and a family friend is staying at the house to look after the dog, cats, chickens and ducks. Unfortunately she has no car at the moment so I offered to taker her and said doggy, Cracker, down to the river with the kids. So off we went and met up with my sister and her dog. They had a blast and Cracker really loves the water. We had him on an extendable lead but couldn't let him off, you know, just in case. The pair of them loved running in and out of the water and chasing sticks.

Then Cracker decides to hurl himself right into the water and he managed to wrench his lead out of O's hand. The river is very full at the moment and the islands that the girls usually play on have disappeared, now there is a swirling whirlpool thing were the two rivers meet. And yes Cracker managed to throw himself into the edge of it. Bless him, poor dog was swimming against the current desperately trying to get back to dry land and getting nowhere. We tried to reach him but he was too far out.

In I go, and was quickly surprised by how deep the water was, and how strong the current was. I grabbed hold of Cracker and tried to pull him in, but all he wanted to do was climb on top of me!! This didn't help and wasn't getting us anywhere. So I decided to let the current take me and hope it would take me to the bank, but I let Cracker go and couldn't get him to come with me. But the rest on me must have given him the edge because as I floated away he managed to haul himself into shallower water and was helped the rest of the way by my sister!

I watched my cigarettes float passed me, guess it's time to give up, and eventually reached the shallows. It took me another ten minutes to work my way out of the river up the bank through all the nettles and thistles, but at least we were ok! I then remembered I had my car keys and phone in my pocket, keys work, phone doesn't! Oh well, if that's the price for not seeing your neighbours dog floating away down a river then I'll live with it!

Yay, Champion of the Underdog!