A brief paddle, then a slow drift back to shore

Let me clear the air right away. I’m sorry I left you hanging.

Actually, I’m not entirely sorry because it actually was my original intent to leave you knee deep a few weeks ago as I signed off mid-story in the quest to get my landlubber of a dog into water over his ankles for the first time. The tale was filled with background and build-up, and I figured you’d enjoy a week’s worth of speculation on whether Frankie, the quarter-breed Labrador Retriever, would sink or swim when faced with the rolling waves of Lake Erie. I did not, however, intend to leave you treading water for a full 14 days. That transgression demands an explanation.

Since our very first humor piece hit the press over 27 years ago, my illustrator wife Kristin and I had never taken a single week off. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail has kept us from concocting a column and crafting a cartoon to run alongside it. So what sort of life-altering, earth-shattering, cataclysmic event proved capable of bringing our decades-long streak to an end? It was a canoe float.

That’s right, folks. I ditched a duty I had somehow managed to complete for 1,432 weeks straight simply for the opportunity to paddle a beat-up canoe on a short loop through the shallow waters of a weedy lake in Wisconsin. That my son-in-law was in the bow was fun and new, but that a small boy was seated between us, mid-boat and swaddled in a blaze-blue life jacket … Well that was everything!

This was my grandson James’ first paddle, and there was no way on earth I was going to miss it. Yes, I should have planned ahead, and yes, I could have stayed up all night afterward to meet my deadline, but obviously, I did neither.

During our brief excursion, the 3-year-old carefully plucked a yellow cow lily from the water and declared, “I’m going to take this ‘sea flower’ to Mama.” Based on that moment alone, I have no regrets. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

All of that said, we can now return to Frankie on the shore of Lake Erie, where distracted by the obsessive and endless big-water retrieves of Sage the German Shorthair and the endless pestering of Butch the 4-month-old Boxer pup, Frankie followed me out onto an ankle-deep sandbar without so much as a twitch. (I sometimes wonder if the mutt even feels his feet as he will unwittingly walk through darn near anything.) From there it was only a matter of time until the next big swell would rise to test the dog’s true buoyancy. Kristin cringed on the nearby shoreline, her fears that our wonder mutt would be lost to the sea entirely unfounded.

When the wave came, it welled up under the dog’s belly and effortlessly moved him 10 feet toward the shore to set him down again. I’m not so sure Frank even knew what happened. He didn’t squirm. He didn’t shuffle. He didn’t even doggy paddle so much as simply float along with a puzzled smile dripping from his jowls. Even though he may not have reveled in his first “swim” — or even noticed it for that matter — it certainly didn’t drown him. I’m calling it a success.

Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John atjlorson@alonovus.com.