Splashing With Benny

July was a record-breaker as far as rainfall goes. Several times during the course of the month, creeks swelled and flooded their banks. A few of those times, we would witness fish which were stranded in puddles when those waters receded. Some were easy to scoop up and toss into the nearby water where they belonged (which Frank made a point of doing), and some which were more elusive, were left to perish when the puddle would evaporate in the hot sun.

Our usual evening walk takes us along a path which roughly follows the creek. Following a particularly torrential downpour, the skies cleared and the sun glinted off of the rain-soaked creek. As Frank, Benny and I made our way along a low-lying part of the walk, the path disappeared under water.



Frank was willing to turn back and call it a walk but Benny was still raring to go.



I opted to kick off my shoes and socks, leave them with Frank and see how far along we could get.

If you've been following Benny's antics from other blog posts, you'll know that in his wonderful doggie mind, moving water is a challenge.



As he noticed the current...



...and the splashes from my own footsteps, he had to have them.



And of course I had to oblige by kicking water at him.



We continued like this along the path until we came to a dip in the valley. The water was a bit deeper here, which would have been fine since we were both already soaking wet, but the rain had washed a lot more of the mud along with it, making for very slippery footing.




I wasn't willing to sacrifice my camera, so we turned back toward home.

Kicking and splashing in the water with Benny that day seemed to be a perfect tension-breaker. It had been a particularly stressful week and for that day, much of it dissipated each time my feet made contact with the water.

A few days later, I read this post by my bloggie buddy, Suldog. It tells of the emotions and wonder we felt as children when we explored and discovered the joy of learning by playing. The mood of his post instantly brought to mind the memory of this recent walk through the puddles. I hope you'll read it, and become a Suldog fan too.