Clover, you are beautiful.......Congratulations on your coronation today. I think you would've loved meeting a
Black Lab (Ben) I used to care for and play with.

Ben was large, as handsome as a Lab can be, muscular, and his sole reason for existence - if you asked him - was to swim and chase.

We'd go to one of the parks that border the Seattle waterfront with Ben's favourite tennis balls (definition: Ben's favourite tennis balls were ANY AND ALL tennis balls.)
I'd bring a tennis racket, stand by the shore, and hit them out as far as I could...and do so for an hour, til my arm was about to fall off.
Ben never tired.

One time we were there - by accident - without any tennis balls or the racket. Ben sat by the water's edge, looking out across the strait, searching for a bobbing ball for him to retrieve.
Then he saw a freighter, miles out, and decided - in his playful doggie mind - that the ship was filled with millions of tennis balls.
Luckily, Ben was still on leash and I held him back.

But Ben was too strong for me and he
did take off and dragged me into the water with him.
There was no way to stop him; he'd drag me til he tired, if ever.
I held on, pulled along by him, watersurfing on my back.
This went on for hours.

Ben swimmed by ferries and safety buoys, past a pod of orcas, a fleet of diving pelicans, a family of leaping dolphins, still headed out towards the freighter.
I'd maneuvered myself so I could stay on my back, with the leash around both shoulders. It was quite comfortable and, after awhile, I fell asleep.
When I did awaken, Ben had dragged me up on a small island's beach, near where a weathered pleasure craft had broken down some time before.

Ben was resting in the shade of a group of areca palm trees, getting his strength up for another try for the freighter, now a tiny dot heading westward towards Asia. I quickly got out of my leash-harness, still attached to Ben, and tied it tightly to one of the trees so he couldn't escape.
I found some fresh fruit and berries to eat and caught a few birds for Ben, then examined the boat to see how badly it was damaged.
I was down working on the boat's internal housing mechanism when I heard voices calling to me from outside on the beach.
It was a man and a woman.

"Hi," said the guy, "I'm the Professor."
"And I'm Mary Jane," the woman said.

I climbed down from the boat just as another guy appeared - a very goofy-looking guy - who untied Ben from the tree and, you guessed it...Ben took off again on his quest, dragging the guy down the beach towards the water's edge.
But as Ben dived into the waves, dragging his cargo behind him, the most amazing thing happened. Instead of
(O, excuse me...my cell phone. B back in a few with the rest of the tale.)

/////Knate