St. Louis Ponds are in Gervais (jer’-vus), Oregon, about an hour south of Portland, down Hwy. 99E. Two sets of ponds are maintained by Marion County: one set for fishing and the other for dog training.
Cooper’s dad, Balloo, is a very talented dock-diver, so we thought Cooper would be a natural. But he hasn’t been very willing to jump off docks. But today, we hope we saw that beginning to change.
Today is a rare holiday from work, so Russ and I decided to go down to the Ponds and just toss some bumpers. In past bumper throwing sessions, Cooper would simply run into the water from a low point on the shore. But today what we got was a dog who has decided to leap into the water off a two-foot-or-so-high ridge.
Not only that, but Cooper was actually bringing the bumper to me. Amazing! ‘Course, that took a bit of doing — I pretended I was a tree (that’s me being a tree-with-hat in the upper right picture below), and I didn’t even move to pick up the bumper and throw it until it was on my feet. But it took only three or four repetitions of that until Cooper got the point.
[…] in this far corner of the park is a pond that brings back fond memories. This is where Cooper revealed his passion for water, jumping, and retrieving. The masthead banner of the Cooper Project (see top of this page) is […]