To watch a Labrador Retriever swim in the lake is like watching a sea otter. Their heads are above water and they meander with such ease in the water. Our chocolate labs have grown up swimming at our family cottage in Suttons Bay, Michigan. This year, a family friend took them for a weekend vacation to their lakeside family cottage near Elkhart, Indiana. Now if you have never owned a lab, they love the water. These beautiful creatures believe this is paradise at its best. Labs have webbed feet. If you spread their paws, there is a built-in paddle – each webbed paw is in the in-between parts like a duck. They can spend more time swimming after a stick or a ball, until you have to declare the game is over.

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace.
– Milan Kundera

Jake and Ginger, our chocolate labs, have returned from their adventures at the lake. This is a time to reflect, if only they could describe the wonderments of the water and nature at its best.

The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
– Samuel Butler; Notebooks, 1912

Take time to visit a family cottage or lake this summer. If you don’t own a dog, take pleasure in watching the contentment and happiness of a dog swimming in the lake. It will sooth the soul.

-Dori Penning