The only animals you’ll usually find in municipal swimming pool are humans.  It’s the end of the year, though, and Maplewood, Missouri is one of many communities that invites dogs into the pool before draining the water.  Out of curiosity, I visited Maplewood’s pool today and saw numerous dogs anxious to hit the water.

Entering a swimming pool filled with dogs that don’t know each other presents some hazards, of course.  Therefore, children under the age of 12 are not allowed into the pool area.   Adults who do enter are asked to sign a comprehensive waiver of liability.

Once admitted to the pool itself, this is what you would have seen today.   Lots and lots of dogs.  I was there in the early afternoon, and probably saw 100 dogs in the pool.  The only hazard I experienced was that I almost tripped over a few dogs.   They were truly everywhere.  No one seemed distraught that most of the dogs were swimming naked.  Somehow, it’s very different when the naked animals are humans.

Yesterday, at the nearby pool of University City, a friend of mine reported that she saw 400 dogs in the water at the same time.

This swimming pool full of dogs and people reminded me that people and dogs have developed incredibly close emotional bonds.  And these bonds all happened over the past 20,000 years because, until then, there were no dogs on planet Earth.  In a blink of an eye, dogs evolved from gray wolves, thanks largely to neotony. The two species are still so closely related that they can still breed with each other.  To shake things up at the pool, then, I could have cried wolf, though I didn’t.