The Vizsla Newzsletter (Apr/ May 1998)
A Walk on The Wild Side

Monday morning started out like most Monday mornings do, up at 6.30am to let the (Vizsla) pups (Tosca & Zig) out for their morning "private business" so to speak, then onto breakfast and the usual play on the bed with Myndee the Springer Spaniel while Mum tries to eat her breakfast.

During the previous week I had arranged with Jan Edwards to begin training the pups on the lead ready for their debut into the show ring, and was to be at her place at 10.30 for the fun to begin. In the meantime Mike with his Vizsla Chance had called into Jan's to say he was going trout fishing and would we care to join them down at Lake Wairarapa after our training session.

Well the training session went OK for first time and, pleased with ourselves, we loaded the pups (Troy, Jan's pup as well) into the Ute and off we went to the lake to find Mike and Chance. This was accomplished quite easily but the spot he had chosen had no fish running so we followed him to the next location. It was a glorious sight to see an older Vizsla jumping into the water and three pups doing their best to keep up with her, however no fish in location number two so location number three was proceeded to. Now this is when the fun starts. To get to the mouth of the river various bogs, wet land etc need to be traversed. Gluesome, slimy, yukky stuff and not to Jan's or my liking, however we made it to the river and Mike and Chance struck some live ones which were duly caught and landed and the pups had a ball in the water and digging to China in the sand.

Alas time passes very fast when one and all are having fun, and all too soon it was time to head back. Jan announced that she wasn't going through that bog again and that we would take a short cut through what looked to be a shallow enough lagoon. Have you guessed what comes next? I followed Jan and the first part was a piece of cake so to speak, onto an island in the middle. Onto part two with pups in hot pursuit and a valuable camera around my neck. Two paces in and the going got tough but the tough didn't get going, in fact the tough got scary and the water got deeper and the going got slower with the announcement from Jan that her knickers were wet and she hates getting her knickers wet! That's about when I almost took a dive under the water saved by Jan's timely hand. I've forgot to mention that I am about four inches shorter than Jan so I'll leave it to your imagination how much of me got wet!

The whole time this mini drama was taking place we had three pups swimming around us helping us to keep our balance as well as asking to be picked up and why were we standing in the middle of this deep lagoon.

Luckily for us there were no witnesses to us emerging from the water and thank goodness I travel with dog towels in the Ute. I didn't bother popping into Jan's for a cuppa when I dropped her off, much preferred to get home and wash the swampy smell off me. The pups of course had had a ball and fell asleep totally unaware of the drama their two short cut handlers had gone through!