Friday, January 11, 2008

I know it's been a while since I posted... but, I have been taking care of a lot of business regarding my health and the like.

Anyway, I was just watching a movie I love "Eddie and the Cruisers II" and in this one scene Michael Pare and his girlfriend are traveling between gigs and are stopped with the band at some snowbound rolling river play area... and it reminded me of this really cool experience in my life when I lived in Reno, NV.

I was living with my girlfriend Honey, who later was to become the mother of my daughter Rachael Jayne. I had gifted Honey during one Christmas with an absolutely beautiful healthy six-month-old St. Bernard Puppy who was delivered to the house with a huge red bow around it's neck on Christmas morning. Honey was, as you can imagine ecstatic, especially because she, at another time in her life - had owned two Saints... and had told me many many stories about them.

One fine cold February morning, a couple of months later - I took Christopher, then eight months old, X-Country skiing with me out in a very flat area near the Truckee River tributary
near some cabins that a friend owned to see how the dog handled himself in the snow and to see how his nose was when I hid from him... you know the old St. Bernard Finding people in the snow stuff. Turns out that there was nothing I could do to ditch this dog. What an animal!

I took him over to what was called the "Little Truckee" river, which was the tributary I was mentioning above - to see if there was a safe area for the dog to drink. Turns out that the tributary was flowing way too fast - and was about three (3) feet deep right at the edge with no safe place to wade in.

So what does Christopher do? He steps right in this little river, goes head over heels and begins to get carried downriver really fast. So, should I jump in immediately? Like right NOW!? I'm screaming & calling and whistling and running (following down stream) as loud as I can, when suddenly he comes to a stop in the middle of the river, laying on a sandbar or something, facing upstream (my way).

He looks at me and cocks his huge-little eight-month old puppy head as if to ask, "why are you shouting"? And then, (I swear to God) he dips his head and casually begins to lap at the water... drinking his fill of this freezing river water! I doubled over laughing! When he was through, I called him - and he, without a struggle swam upstream towards me, met me right where I was standing, I reached down and grabbed him by his fur on the scruff of his neck and helped him out, stood back, he shook off, and that was that.

We Wrestled in the snowand and laughed for about five minutes. I then went to him and examined his fur. Pulled it apart down to his skin and there was at least a half-inch of his fur that wasn't even wet, let-alone his skin.

Sure loved that dog. Ask me sometime about some other Christopher stories. I've got some beauties.