Focus on Life~Week 21 Reminisce

My gosh, I can't believe we are almost to the halfway point of this year's photography journey...where HAS the year gone??!

Sally's prompt this week is: 

"Have you ever been in the middle of a busy day and all of a sudden you run across a certain baked good, candy, flower...or an object catches your attention... and you are sent right back to your childhood?"

Well, as a matter of fact...yes! And here is the object....

Doesn't look like much, does it? Yes, it is a rock. A pretty ordinary rock, with some leftover marks from snails, and a bit of wear and tear. 

This rock has travelled 4124 km (2563 miles for you US folks) from its origins in a lake in the interior of British Columbia, Canada to Barrie, ON with a stop of about 40 years in Calgary, AB, Canada. 

Why, you ask? Well, let me tell you.....

Cindy was my very first dog; her name was Cinders, but we called her Cindy for short...unless she was BAD Puppy of course. She wasn't very often Bad Puppy. 

When I was little, I wanted a puppy very, very badly...what little girl doesn't? But Dad said no. And then one summer day I went to our church bazaar with my caregiver, and there was this box of puppies. Warm, cuddly, wiggly, teeny, cocker spaniel/pekingese cross puppies. I fell in LOVE....and was devastated when we had to leave. About 2-3 weeks later, it was my birthday; my usual birthday gift was a Nancy Drew mystery book, and I loved those books. This year, however, there was no book waiting for me on my birthday. I thought my Dad had forgotten me..but when he came home from work that night, he took me out to the garage and brought out a box...a box filled with puppy!! He had contacted the folks from the bazaar after the fact, and one puppy remained at that point. 

I was over the moon!! 

As Cindy grew, she also grew into her Cocker tendencies...she would retrieve ANYthing someone would throw for her, and my Dad and I and my friends spent endless hours down on the beach (we lived right on the shore of the lake) throwing things for Cindy to retrieve. Once you started...Cindy wouldn't let you quit until she dropped from exhaustion...or you did!

As teenagers, my friends and I got frustrated with her, because we couldn't tan in peace, and one day we decided we'd throw something into the water for her to see if she'd swim out to retrieve that....oh yes! She swam right out there, and brought back that stick. She thought this was a fantastic new game! It did keep her busy for a few minutes longer LOL, so we liked it too.

But soon, with her new enthusiasm, that grew old for us kids too...so, being teenagers, we thought we'd fix her wagon....(no, no cruelty involved). 

The beach is quite a rocky one...  Here's a picture of the public beach just down the road from our house....Sandy Beach Naramata BC. There's a strip of sand just at the edge of the water, about 6 ft wide, but otherwise the beach is just rocks. So we chose a nice sized rock from the beach, and threw it into the water about 20 ft out, for Cindy to retrieve. And yes, as you've probably guessed by now.....she did! We watched her swim out to where the ripples were originating, dive head down into the water, which was about 5 ft deep at that point...and come up spluttering with that rock in her mouth! We could NOT believe it...and when my Dad heard, he couldn't either...until he did it himself, and she brought it back. 

She actually became quite the town sensation with this trick. She could always pick "her" rock out of hundreds on the shoreline, and she would always retrieve it without fail, no matter how far you threw it out and how deep she had to dive. As she grew older, she loved to swim on her own as well, and grew adept at swimming underwater. Our house was about 100 ft away from a public beach, and we always knew when Cindy was out swimming from the screams of snorkelers coming face to face with a dog underwater LOL!! I truly think she LOVED to scare people to death that way.

Here's Cindy at about age 3....notice the rock to the right in the picture:

When Cindy was about 8, we were forced because of economics to move away from this lovely place..and my heart was broken when Cindy, the country dog who had rarely ever seen a car except ours, was run down in the alley behind our house in Calgary by a driver who didn't even pause. 

Here's Cindy at her happiest, with my Mom in about 1959:

Thanks for the memories, Sally! Please do check with everyone else and their reminiscences HERE