Sometimes the best adventures involve a little planning, family, and dogs who may or may not be ready to make a big splash.
George, dog sitter Jenn, and Nancy attended the 11th annual Parks & Rex Dog Pool Party at Simpkins Family Swim Center, a fundraiser for the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter. With us were our border collies: Ho’aka (the mama), and 2 daughters Hoku and Panda.
Nancy first heard about Parks & Rex in 2024 while visiting the “kids” in California. Moving all the dogs to Santa Cruz from Hawaii was an adventure in itself. The dogs had to be shipped on jumbo planes to Los Angeles, 2 with Nancy, and 3 the next day with George, then driven up to Santa Cruz in a giant rented SUV. Ed Bigelow’s daughter, Peg, kindly put us up with our 5 dogs in her home for 3 weeks (yes, weeks!) while we waited for our house to close. For that she surely should be knighted or sainted or awarded some kind of Nobel prize.
Back to the Pool Party for Dogs
Simpkins Family Swim Center opens its warm water kiddie pool once a year for a fundraiser just before it undergoes its annual deep cleaning. About 300 furry friends and their humans participate. The dogs were given 20-minute off-lead swim sessions contained in fenced groups of 15 similarly-sized friendly pooches. They could paddle, splash through the spray zone, and play with other dogs.
And our dogs? George handled Hoku in the medium dog category. She did very well. She swam some with George but largely stayed in the shallows. It was quite chaotic with the dogs running everywhere. Jenn handled Panda, who Nancy regrets putting in the “large dog” category. Panda was overwhelmed by the chaos and the giant dogs and she mostly stayed in a shallow wading pool that was removed from the main action. Nancy handled Ho’aka who was scheduled for the next “medium dog” category but was invited in with Panda who kept running over to Nancy on the fence line. Ho’aka barked incessantly because of all the excitement and refused to go in the main pool. She did finally come into the quieter shallow wading pool with Panda, but never stopped barking until we all exited to where all dogs were leashed and behaving in a properly civilized and controlled manner. Ho’aka dislikes chaos.
Nancy now sees, that we clearly have “medium dogs” and next year will schedule them all together in one single session. Next week we are taking Lele Boy and Onipa’a to the Pawish Spa Event at the Chaminade Resort & Spa for another animal shelter fundraiser event. Santa Cruz is proving to be super fun for dogs.
*The outstanding photo is of Hoku shaking off was taken by the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
