(A story about our Jessie)
Early one Sunday morning, Peter was exercising our three Rottweilers on a deserted stretch of beach, two adults, Hugo and Jessie and an eight month old puppy bitch, Priscilla daughter of Jessie. It had rained heavily all day every day for the past week and exercise had been limited, so everyone was out to enjoy this run even more than usual.
Priscilla had boundless energy and streaked ahead of the others, chasing flies, seagulls, waves, shadows, anything at all that moved ! Faster and faster - too fast to stop - and plunged headlong into the lagoon !! This lagoon is normally very shallow and one can walk across it easily, but on this occasion it was heavily swollen with flood waters, open to the sea and the current was VERY strong.
It was Priscilla's first experience with really deep water. She began to swim but the current was too strong for her inexperienced attempts at swimming. She panicked. There was much flailing of legs and splashing as the current swept her along.
Jessie took in this situation in a flash and acted swiftly without human direction from Peter who by now had caught up to the dogs. Jessie raced downstream along the bank of the lagoon to get ahead of Priscilia, jumped in and swam strongly against the current to meet the pup. Using her head and shoulders, she nudged and manoeuvred Priscilla across to the far bank giving her a good shove onto the rocks and safety.
Peter and Hugo were now on one side of the lagoon, with Peter eyeing the water unenthusiastically. Jessie and Priscilla were on the other side with Jessie blocking every attempt made by Priscilla to re-enter the water until she ran upstream to where the water was shallower. She swam/waded across to the opposite bank to where Hugo was following her progress, anxious and alert. She floundered once and lost her footing as she clambered up the bank. Hugo started down to her but stopped immediately he saw she had regained her foothold and was scrambling out, closely followed by a grumbling Jessie.
The errant Priscilla, quite unperturbed by the whole incident, frisked off jauntily along the beach in search of more action. However, each time she ran even close to the water's edge, Jessie simply flew at her, chastising her with furious barking and growling to chase her away from the water, clearly indicating that she had caused enough trouble for one morning.
Our Jessie (Ashona Von Ardina) certainly wasn't standing behind the door when the brains were given out. She was not just a powerful swimmer, she was very definitely a thinking dog!!
Kameraden Rottweilers, Pambula ,NSW.Australia.
PS Jessie is no longer with us but has passed on her character and 'thinking' ability to her many fine progeny.
