Water fountain is not just for humans
I was in the habit of making a rendezvous with my loved one at the Bay View beer garden every Friday afternoon.
As its name implies, the Bay View Hotel looks out over the placid delights of Woy Woy Bay and was a perfect, relaxing place to start the weekend.
On this particular day I sat, beer in hand, scanning the vista beyond, when I noticed a singular water-feature between the pub and the water's edge.
It was a fountain, and an unusual one.
It consisted of a ground-level dish, about two metres wide, from which spurts of water occasionally flew up.
There must have been a dozen or so water nozzles in the dish that randomly shot up a spout of water, which then splashed down and recycled through the centre of the dish.
The fountain was fascinating to watch, and I noted that it was indeed "random" and seemed to have no particular pattern by which the spurts shot upwards.
I was admiring the operations of the fountain when I noticed an interloping dog, a medium sized short-haired bitser, the sex of which I couldn't quite fathom.
The dog was interested in the spurts as well.
At first it circled and watched, and then it ventured its snout towards the nozzles that had recently spurted.
The dog gradually grew more 'au fait', and began to anticipate squirts and poke its nose nearby, to collect some of the splash.
But this was just the prelude.
At some stage this astute canine had the equivalent of a dog brain-bomb.
The light went on.
It had hit upon a certain Eureka! moment.
Within a very short time it had devised a strategy whereby it lay with its nether regions smack-dab above the water-spout.
It splayed its back legs so that its genitalia lay fair and square on top, as it were.
Every now and then a spurt occurred, and the look on the dog's face was one of such unsurpassed ecstasy as to be the ultimate definition of animal bliss.
When each spurt happened it was as though it was transported way beyond Woy Woy, a dream-like smile locked onto its dial, and its tongue lolled out.
Canine heaven.
In my life, I don't think I have ever seen a happier dog, nor a more functionally perfect water-feature.
Email, 21 May 2013
Bob Treasure, Patonga