Look out below!

Here is how I look when I have been swimming and running. It is similar to how I look when I accidentally almost do myself in.

My Person says I need climbing gear or longer toe nails or less enthusiasm for high-risk adventures. This might have something to do with the fact that today I fell out of a tree at the dog park. About a 12 foot drop. Aren't I remarkable?

How, you might ask, did I get so high up a tree? Easy, I would reply. I ran!

The dog park has lots of big old cottonwoods, those great water-loving trees with complicated, bank-stabilizing root systems. Well, the river rises and the river falls and sometimes those trees stand knee-deep in water and sometimes the river rushes by and drags away the sand. And after a few – or even many – years the roots don't have so much sand to hold on to and the big old cottonwoods begin to slant a little. Or a lot. Some of the dog park cottonwoods stand at about a 45 degree angle, their angle of repose for now, and just the perfect angle for an intrepid red dog to run right up.

The cottonwoods start out broad and then they begin to taper. I was running up every cottonwood I could find and making a neat U-turn just as the trunk was almost too narrow for a maneuver like that and then running down again as fast as I could. And then on to the next tree.

I was scaring my Person a bit, and Tasha's Person too. Tasha was there but not climbing - she's a more cautious sort and she's not sturdy like me. One might even call her delicate. Anyway, I had this scared-ish audience and I just couldn't resist continuing my tree climbing, especially since I got a treat every time I made it back to terra firma.

Then my great trick turned into a great fall. I ran too far up a tree and the trunk got too tapered and my U-turn went a bit wobbly and then I sailed through the air and all one could hear was the collective intake of breath by my watchers and the plaintive call "Finnegan!" I was a bit crumpled in the sand with my tail tucked and my ears back and I was as scared as everyone else. At first. Then I tried out all my movable parts and they still moved and I tried out my non-moving parts and they still didn't move and I tried out my ability to eat treats and that was unimpaired so I popped up, good as new!

My Person says she's going to start carrying a giant blue IKEA bag to the dog park to use as a portable stretcher just in case one of my adventures has a bad end. I think she worries too much. Doesn't she know that trees are for climbing?