Tess held out the yellow tennis ball and pointed across the yard. "Dash," she said, very seriously, "basket. By the shed. Do not stop. Do not splash. Go." Dash's tail went thwack-thwack-thwack against her knees. He took the ball gently in his big soft mouth and trotted off into the golden evening.
Sniff, sniff, sniff. The grass smelled of cut clippings and something interesting near the rose bush. Dash paused. He swung his nose left. He swung it right. Then he remembered: basket, shed, ball. He kept going. Good dog. Mostly. The garden path curved past the lavender, past the wobbly stone frog, and straight toward the ornamental pond. The water caught the last of the sunlight and threw it back in little bright coins. Dash's ears went up. His paws slowed. His tail went very, very still.
Then — SPLASH. Four enormous black paws, one yellow tennis ball, and a great deal of Dash went into the pond all at once. Water flew in every direction. The wobbly stone frog looked extremely unimpressed. Dash surfaced, ball still clamped in his jaws, and shook his ears. That was when he saw it: one small duckling, round as a bread roll, spinning in a slow confused circle near the lily pads. Peep, said the duckling. Peep-peep-peep. It had absolutely no idea which way was the lake dock.
Sniff, sniff, sniff. Dash stretched his nose toward the duckling. The duckling stretched its beak toward Dash's nose. They looked at each other for a long, dripping moment. Dash understood the situation immediately. He was a Labrador. Labradors always understand water situations. He paddled a slow loop around the duckling, nudging it gently with his chin toward the garden gate. The duckling paddled after him, peeping, its tiny feet churning like two pink spoons. Sniff, sniff, sniff — Dash could smell the lake from here, cold and green and not far.
Through the gate they went, across the long lawn where the dew had already started and the grass was cold and wet underfoot. A bat flickered overhead, very fast, like a torn piece of shadow. The duckling pressed close to Dash's elbow and kept paddling through the puddles along the path. At the top of the bank, the dock stretched out over the dark water. Below it, a mother duck sat waiting, her feathers puffed to twice their size, her eyes sharp and bright. She made a sound that was not quite a quack and not quite a complaint. It was both. Dash walked to the end of the dock. He looked at the water. The water looked back. He was a Labrador. This was a dock. There was really only one thing to do. He leapt. A magnificent, irresistible, absolutely enormous leap, ball still in his mouth, duckling bobbing safely off his wake and into its mother's wing in one perfect wobbling arrival. The splash echoed off the hills. Then: quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. A whole round of evening quacks, rising off the water like slow applause.
Sniff, sniff, sniff. Dash dragged himself up the bank, trotted back across the lawn, through the gate, along the path, and stopped at the basket by the shed. He opened his jaws. The yellow tennis ball dropped in. Thunk. Still round. Still yellow. Ready for tomorrow. He shook himself, thoroughly, magnificently, all the way from nose to tail. The shed got very wet. Then Dash walked to his mat, turned one circle, and lay down with one damp ear folded over his nose, his sides rising and falling, his paws twitching once, very slightly, as if he were already diving again.
