Kaiju will have his 2nd Flowdog session on Monday.

His first session was on the 5th of August. We were so nervous as to how he would react, to the therapist Chris, or to having to go into an unfamiliar building, being touched, and most important of all, the swimming pool…

Good thing we brought his favorite blue towel (and a rope toy). He let us walk him around in the lobby while waiting, but would go straight back to the home base to sit on afterward.

We had alerted Chris, the therapist, of Kaiju’s shyness via email ahead of time, so she approached him accordingly. When the session began, she ignored him completely for the first 20 minutes or so, and Kaiju hid behind the chairs.

Eventually, we got him out of there, laid him down on his towel, and went through some lessons of manual stretching. All those things we learned, we’d have to do at home every day for the next few weeks.

He remained skittish until he finished his first ladder exercise, for which he got a big loud cheer. That seemed to have put him in a better mood. He was more eager to do exercises after that.

Finally, it was time for swimming. It was going to be the first time in his life to be submerged in water. We were totally anxious, not knowing what to expect from him.

As Chris held Kaiju in her arms, and slowly entered the water. Paul and I were 90% sure he’d somehow refuse to go in. We kept yelling out warnings to Chris.

“This breed is known to hate water!”
“He doesn’t like bath!”
“He may scream!”
“Yah, his scream is blood curdling.”

And then, we just held our breaths.

Woah. We couldn’t believe how well that went. We were all so happy and excited.

“I think he trusts me” said Chris, and planted a kiss on his neck. I mean, who can resist the soft and fluffy Shiba neck?

Look at him go!

We were giggling and laughing uncontrollably. It was such a huge relief to learn that he was able to handle the aqua therapy.

And his little paddling paws were just so damn cute.

We can’t wait to see them again, on Monday.