The Dog Who Learned to Swim

It is a widely held belief that Labradors love water. This is true of almost all Labradors. Cooper was the exception. He regarded every body of water — paddling pools, garden hoses, large puddles, the sea in all its vastness — with a combination of suspicion and personal affront, as if water had at some point done something specific to offend him and he had not forgotten it.

The Henderson family had taken him to three different lakes across two summers. Each time, Cooper had walked to the water's edge, sniffed at it, looked at the family with an expression of quiet disappointment, and walked away. They had tried treats near the water. They had tried wading in themselves. They had tried enthusiastic encouragement. Nothing worked.

The breakthrough came not from any human effort but from a mallard duck of exceptional boldness.

It was a Sunday afternoon at Riverside Park. Cooper was trotting along the bank on his lead while Mr. Henderson held his coffee and Mrs. Henderson read the paper on a bench. Their son Joe had thrown a tennis ball twice, and Cooper had retrieved it both times — always careful to stay back from the waterline.

On the third throw, the ball landed at the very edge of the bank, bouncing once and rolling to a stop right at the water. Cooper approached it, sniffed it, looked at the water, and looked at the ball. He stood in this calculation for a moment.

The duck appeared from under the bank overhang. It was a large, confident mallard who had clearly made the park his territory for some years. He waddled directly to the tennis ball, picked it up in his bill, walked back to the water's edge, and sat down on it.

Cooper stared. The duck stared back with the blank, impervious stare that ducks do so well.

Cooper took one step forward. The duck did not move. Cooper took another step. The duck shifted the ball slightly under himself, as if to make clear the situation.

Cooper put his right front paw in the water. He looked at it. He put his left front paw in. He stood in four inches of water for a moment, perfectly still, recalibrating everything he had previously believed about his relationship with water.

Then something gave way, and Cooper lurched forward with a splash, swimming in great frantic strokes toward the most disrespectful duck he had ever encountered. The duck waited until the last possible moment, then paddled serenely away, ball-free, leaving the tennis ball floating on the surface.

Cooper grabbed the ball. He swam back to shore. He shook himself dramatically all over Mr. Henderson's coffee and Mrs. Henderson's newspaper. Then he looked at the water and walked straight back in.

The duck, from a safe distance, watched with complete indifference.

Cooper swam for an hour. He had to be lifted out of the water and carried to the car. On every subsequent visit to Riverside Park, he was in the water before his lead was even unclipped. The Henderson family sent a thank-you to no one in particular, because there is no known address for ducks.